ginhawa

Desiderata for Babaylans

2012-01-16T20:22:00.000-08:00

This is who I am now as a babaylan. when I turned 8 years old I wanted to be someone like Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly and even the famous dancer Isadora Duncan. I went to the movies weekly and read all the magazines and books I could borrow in school to know how I could become like them. I travelled all over the world trying to talk, walk and be graceful like Grace Kelly, a princess in my heart.

It took five decades before I realized who I can be and how I could make my life extraordinary. I became a Babaylan. The past, present and future me is a fluid process but I have learned from experience that an informed heart and a serene mind are two of the resources that anyone can develop and create a space for one's extraordinary life. Now whatever I do, I do it malumanay and with a kalooban that is best described as "mapagmahal", loving.

Johnny Mathis - Wonderful Wonderful

2010-10-17T23:56:00.000-07:00

Coming to terms with one's health

2009-11-23T18:59:00.000-08:00

Ed asked told me last night " You havent been blogging Girlie." "Yes, I havent been writing anything since my foot swelled and I couldnt go out." I realized that being house bound had made my writing difficult and that I needed to see, listen and talk to my body. Since my left heel became painful, I went to the acupuncturist for weekly treatments but last week, the foot that had been treated swelled and became very painful. My first impluse was to call the acupuncturist doctor for her to see me. But I wanted to take responsibility first and did my bodytalk access. I wrote to my bodytalk mentor Dorothy Friesen and she promptly did a distance scanning of my foot.

Let me first refresh people what bodytalk is so you can benefit from this blog. Bodytalk is a health system, a complimentary system that is consciousness-based. It taps the innate wisdom of our bodies and does not claim panacea for all illness. When Ed and I took a course in bodytalk access, we were taught to respect our body integrity and to ask permission first before we do anything, especially if we were to help someone. After the course, we were encouraged to practice it on ourselves and our families. I tried it on babies, toddlers and on family members. I practised it daily and saw positive results. During small emergencies, I am able to use it as a fast aid, eg. cuts, bruises, stomach aches, colds, coughs and fever. My most painful dental treatments have become manageable with bodytalk. Even my bouts with food , eg. when taking food cooked by upset chefs, had been relieved by bodytalk protocols.

How does one tap innate body wisdom ? Dorothy Friesen does it via biomuscular feedback. She taps the part that is painful and asks. If she gets an bioelectrical pulse, she proceeds to do the protocols - steps where the brain and heart are tapped. There are five protocols we learned and they are all very easy to do. Even three year -old children can learn to do it. The protocols are done to maintain wellness and bodytalk does not claim to be a therapy for all kinds of illness.

But how do we know when we are really ill? Our bodies send many signals of which pain is the most common. When I did my foot scanning, I realized immobility is a deep source of fear - I am afraid to lose my mobility and my ability to help others. When Dorothy did a remote scanning ( since she is in Canada), she told me about my wanting to do so much for people who suffer. After Ondoy and the suffering it unleashed, I tried to do as much as I could to help. But I felt I didnt do enough. I reflected on the relief work, on the stories of those who needed help and the attitudes of people who were saved from the floods. I realized what many learned - that people have to rely on their neighbours, on families and friends to be rescued. The local government and authorities were not up to the task .The appeal to do fast emergency work were taken on by private samaritans. All these issues were in my feet.

So what am I to do ? I have to accept, as Dorothy advised, that I am one grain of sand in the sea shore. This is what I mean by coming to terms with myself and my health. I can be a samaritan my whole life, of which I am but I cannot be doineverything.What I do each day for others is part of a greater whole. With this attitude, I hope to heal my foot. Every step I take when I wake up will be to walk towards a golden day.

Communicating for a mother whose mother is dying

2009-11-13T23:23:00.000-08:00

Last night, my orthodentist nimfa texted me about the state of her mother who had been diagnosed by her doctor to be in a state of dying, which my father describes as " the final boarding phase." She needed my help to know what her mother wanted which we call bilin since her mother could no longer talk. It was already late evening and I could not go to her place. I replied yes and gave her instructions on how I can help her communicate from a distance. In all the years that I have been helping family and friends with preparations for final departures, I have found several principles and approaches useful. First, I request that permission is given by the "departee". My name is whispered to the person and if she gives a positive sign like a nod, a smile, a hand or finger movement, then the next step is to pray with the family requesting for divine guidance. I prefer to wait and pray afar from the requesting family so that I can focus my energies on the request. Last night, when my friend texted she saw her mother smile and open her mouth after she gave my name, I started praying. The bilins came into my mind and I began sending them as sms. I asked her mother mentally several times and would send her response both in the form of questions and tasks. After an hour of texting, I asked my friend to act on what I had communicated and promised her I would see her mother the next day.

The next morning, I did my bodytalk and then prayed. I went about my work for ELF and even spent sometime to enjoy the plants in Manila Seedlings. I was waiting for the proper moment to see my friend and her mother. I also had a good massage to tone my senses and build confidence. I am most mindful when all my senses are relaxed. Around 4 pm, I was ready to see my friend and her mother.

The service I did that afternoon ranged from sensing if her mother is still in a communicating mode. When I sensed she wanted to communicate, I did the tapping of her cortices and started interpreting what chores she wants completed , naming family members to call and whose presence she wants, and whether there are family members who have departed but are already present . I did the rite of pagpapahesus, a form of praying which I learned from my mother who learned it from my grandmother. I assured my friend that her mother still had time and that she would wait till everyone she loves have arrived. After the pagpapahesus in her mother's bedroom, I asked my friend to go to church with me. There we prayed for her mother and I told her what other messages I got that afternoon for her and the family, in terms of what they will be doing until the final departure.

Once the bilins had been communicated, I withdrew from the scene and hugged my friend. Then I brought her home but I did not close the channel because I keep an open heart for any other message from the departee. In my experience, the departee has many moments of soul talk and these moments are occasions for profound learning and for receiving grace.

How to care for your ailing parent

2009-05-31T17:38:00.000-07:00

Do you have an ailing parent? Is your father or mother in a hospital?

If yes, we share a common concern. My father, Cesar Villariba, is sick with a number of body pains. First, he has a slipped disc and cannot move without help. Second he has
so much phlegm and coughs a lot. Third, his most painful concern - being dependent entirely on my mother for all his needs. The loss of independence has been a severe blow to his self-esteem. Having been the leader in our community for six decades, since the 1950's, my father has been active in various fields : agriculture, church, coconut industry, education and politics. Now, in his 80's, he has to stay in bed and be taken cared of.

So how does my mother cope? With unconditional love and patience. In the hospital, Tatay would complain about all the medicine he needs to take. You hear him coughing and telling my mother that he wants to eat but cannot eat. My mother is 79 years old and had recovered from flu but she has no rest because she had to attend to my father.

What can you do when you have bother parents in stressful situation? Quality care comes when you realize that your parents need you now.

You start with the hope that they will recover their strength because the secret is in our bodies. I brought the great grandchildren, Andrea and Patricia, to do bodytalk access on my father. Bodytalk access is an energy medicine and it is effective. I taught Andrea, 4 years old, to tap my father's head and heart so she can stabilize him. She has fresh energy and she did what I showed her, tapping the cortices and sternum. Then I brought many teenagers, Ayen, Krisha,Pia, Jojo, Ian, Julienne,Felisha, Krisel and Tetet to visit my parents in the hospital. There were so many of them that the hospital security refused to allow the girls who came in groups. The whole Villariba clan numbers around 80 and we sneek in 20 grandchildren. With their hands pointing to my father, I told them to generate healing energies, sending a stream of love to my father.

On Saturday and Sunday, I brought Kath and Olivia, our visiting scholars from the US, to visit Tatay. I had Olivia tapping Tatay on the head and heart until he could relax and feel the fresh energy of Olivia. It worked very well and my father's mood turned positive. He was happy with Olivia and we continued the healing session.

The bodytalk session is one practice anyone can learn easily. It allows the brain to choose what it needs to do at once - balance the health needs of the body. It allows the whole body to talk to each organ and check it's health. This is good for all, young and old. Talking and listening to one"s body is the secret to health and long life.

heaven for me

2009-03-09T00:12:00.000-07:00

i always believed in a heaven. when i grew into a feminist, heaven faded and became fuzzy. when i reached menopause,heaven resurrected and came as a revelation. what is it really ?

karen armstrong, a religious scholar said that religious creeds mean committing to a compassionate life. she said " religion is not simply about beliefs or faith. it is about compassion. the various religious tenets can be summarized in one rule : the golden rule - do not do to others what you do not want done to you ." yes, i do believe that the divine is both human and sacred. when we die , do we go to heaven if we follow the golden rule ?

yes, love and compassion do not end when we die. we cross over to another love, love for all and we can choose to be reborn to love again, hopefully unconditionally. yes, heaven is unconditional love, the state where we need not lack anything. that is why we can love those who cross over. that is the reason we remember them. because love is the eternal link.

life is a continuing lesson in love

2009-02-28T20:26:00.000-08:00

today, i find myself thinking how it is to be fully alive. waking up with ed makes the morning moment magical. i touch his face and whisper,"oh i love you so much". i spend the moment praying my gratitude that love is alive. then i remember those who have crossed to the afterlife and send my thank you. as i rise from the bed, i look at the window and greet the bougainvillas that have been spreading their bouquets. i say thank you to the garden, to all the trees on my front yard and then go to the bathroom. as i wash myself, i look up the window to view the mango tree and marvel at how it showers us with flowers and fruits.

Inay's gift: Passing on the Torch

2009-02-13T17:27:00.000-08:00

am in the midst of receiving of the torch from Inay, aka as Mommy dela Torre which started during her 89th birthday this february 7 in our Naujan home. yesterday, Feb.13, she crossed over with grace and dignity after a year of overcoming all the pain that diabetes inflicts .. today my tears flow nonstop as i feel her sharing a glimpse of the Light and Love that she finally sees and receives .

Inay is ed's mother. she taught us what parenting is all about. . as i reflected on her life, i realized that she is one of the most prolific mothers i know. her life is one of dedicated service, taking up challenges with a courage that i learned so much from. Inay was one of the first volunteers of the Task Force Detainees ( TFD) with sister Mariani Dimaranan ( who has crossed over too) during the martial law years. Inay's life as an activist mother was long and arduous. ed was detained twice, first in 1974, then in 1982. she went to all the prison camps where ed was detained, brought food, drink and news to the political prisoners. she even put up a piggery to support not just herself but also to help the families of political detainees . i remember Inay carrying food in bayongs and taking the bus, standing in the bus aisle because there was no seat and lugging all the food to camp Bagong Diwa in Bicutan. Inay did this for the nine years ed was detained. feeding the activists wasn't the only thing she did while ed was in detention. she bought farm land in naujan, developed the farm and gave many families a livelihood. she also helped Naujan folkschool learners to build a learning center in her farm in 2000. in 2007, during christmas, we went around the farm and noticed several families who constructed their permanent homes on the lots that Inay gave. i told ed that Inay was very generous - she did not just give them a livelihood, she even gave them homelots. these were fertile lands from her hard- earned money and those of irene, ed's only sister,who sent her remittances to inay.

for a woman who was widowed early ( ed's father vivencio died in 1947), her service record is remarkable. she raised two children and help support her eight siblings to school. inay worked her way to a mountain of public service. she never became a civil servant but did more than any public servant could do in naujan. i recall her listing the cows she distributed to many barangays and when i inquired how many," a hundred", she replied. when the floods came, people told her that they could no longer repay her because the cows perished with the waters. Inay took all the issue with equanimity.there were NGOs such as women's organizations and environmental advocates who relied on her participation and she attended to their needs with tangible work.

Inay never rose to national fame like her son ed but accomplished what we all dreamed of - developed the local economy and sustained its community. we may dream of larger hopes, but inay sowed better seeds. we rushed to protest bigger injustices, while inay walked her talk, engaged the common people and built stronger communities.

last year, on her 88th birthday when her feet developed gangrene, we prayed that her time on this life would be pain free, that she would have the grace to remember us, and that she would enjoy the love of God she generously gave to many people. she followed the lifetime growth law of making our future bigger than our past.

we love you Inay. we thank you for everything. as we gather all the fruits of your life, may you smile upon us and inspire others.

Body Talk Access

2009-01-15T18:21:00.000-08:00

Good news for everyone. to start the year, wellness is our priority. so on jan.15 we held a healing day at bantayog and isis. ed and i sponsored with Myrla Baldonado , Alliance of US Bases Clean-up, two demonstrations of Bodytalk Access with Dorothy Friesen our certified practitioner from Chicago. Bodytalk access has three core tasks ABC : Asking the body its healing priorities, Balancing all its needs, and

Communicating to the whole system what it can do to sustain wellness. when these three processes are in progress, Bodytalk proceeds to conduct five methods called protocols: Cortices,Switching,Hydration, Body Chemistry and Reciprocals. dorothy demonstrated it on a friend ,Agnes Rio, who survived a massive stroke in cambodia. dorothy asked agnes abouyt her state, her breathing and any pain in her body. agnes said that she has a difficulty in breathing and has a pain in her left leg. then dorothy tapped on agnes ’s head and sternum with simple hand gestures and explained that she is activating the left and right brain communication system. the whole demonstration to ease agnes’ breathing and leg pain took 30 minutes and the result was impressive. agnes was happy about her new state and you could see the effect on her right away.

The BodyTalk is based on a synthesis of both Eastern and Western medicine and they describe it as energy medicine. dorothy said it does not simply combine the eastern and western medicine but continues to study the role of quantum physics in our health. we asked her how the healing happens when there is little physical effort and there is no medication or major medical protocol involved. dorothy cited several cases of healing, from third degree burns to recovery from severe diabetes. she said that we have five senses and these senses go beyond the normal perception. for example, diabetes can be seen as a conflict with ‘ the sweetness of life” and the body is unable to produce insulin. when the bodytalk practitioner conducts diagnoses, she has to go through a history of the person’s life, tracing the roots of her family’s stories and predisposition to ’sweet facts of life.” there is a body memory that the bodytalk practitioner tries to access ,much like the psychotherapy protocols and uses biofeedback to obtain a Yes or No.

in isis balai, while dorothy was demosntrating to another group of women healers, i took care of zoey, my one year old apo from a nephew. i tapped her head and heart and she started walking and running around the house. she even found the stars and started saying, “star”. as a one year old, she had a lot of curiousity and found the computer, learned how to tap it until she press the start up button. i ask dorothy about zoey ” Zoey keeps falling down when walking but she continues to walk and run even when she knows it is risky.” She is very alert and fearless (she kept running to the stairs and climbing the windows). Yes, she doesnt want to control herself when exploring her environment, unlike us adults who think we can control everything that we do with our bodies.control and fear go together, so when you let go, the body communicates to its system for balance, the fear disappears and you discover many wonderful things about life ,” dorothy explains.

as i listen to zoey laugh whenever she found new things in the house, i often wonder, can we regain that sense of wonder and joy we used to have when we were children? is that the source of our wellness, being innocent and happy with everything we see, touch and feel ? if zoey can find leaves so wonderful ( she kept touching them and laughing), is this zest for simple things what we need to be recover ?

there are still many questions ed and i have of body healing modalities but it is good to know that there is a system of energy medicine, meaning we dont have to be gifted healers to learn it. we also dont have to be doctors or specialists. bodytalk training is somewhat simpler, for the bodytalk access, one day will be enough. for the more adequate knowledge and certification as technician , five days will be enough . the practice required is six months with a hundred persons, then one takes the written exam and the physical demonstration test.

there are one day training schedules for january 24 and feb. 7. dorothy is training people in quezon city, in clark, in batangas and pampanga. those interested, please contact me asap.

celebrating my 58th birthday

2008-12-15T18:08:00.000-08:00

this 14th of december i told ed that i wanted to celebrate my 58th year with a lot of work on the ground,literally learning how to make the earth happy. i am excited with many opportunities to go organic, from eating wild rice to eating fresh herbs from my own garden. when i reached 50, my time started to fill up with caring for the sick, the dying and searching for people who disappeared. i had to learn how to cope with so much pain and mourning. i thought this must be the menopausal season. but upon reflection, i realized something in my sense of self was expanding. the sikolohiyang pilipino sense of kapwa and kalooban became palpable when i saw that i could reach out to people who cross beyond or they could reach me since i cannot call on them to appear when relatives request for a visit. i had to find a way to sustain my energy and that is how i came to discover going organic.

going organic means releasing the fresh energy of the soil,water and air in plants. going organic means that anything that grows and is eaten by living beings are free of poison. going organic is becoming a responsible member of the web of life and caring for it. going organic is more than being well. going organic is expanding one’s sense of kalooban and kapwa-tao.

have you ever touch soil, smell soil and tasted soil ? when we were children, i used to play with soil and mud, making cakes out of them. when it would rain, i would run and splash mud on playmates. i didnt mind walking on earth, in fact i was happy barefoot. when i saw my mother planting all kinds of flowering plants on our terrace, i took to caring for them. i ate flowers on my way to school and knew all the sweet ones along the path. though we lived in the town center, we were surrounded with trees and gardens. we could eat the kamias of our neighbor, pick aratiles, get as much mangoes and climb the kalachuchi tree. growing up in a green lucena taught me to be aware of the land’s bounty, to respect all living things and be organic. i dont remember going to groceries (now supermarkets) as a treat. going to farms, parks, rivers and beaches were the real treats. we had fun with growing things, from rice to mungo beans.we played with insects- ladybugs, dragon flies, butterflies. our family had lots of pets - turtles, beetles, monkeys,and even a snake pet. we lived organic in the 50s.

now that i am going to be a senior citizen, i plan to grow vegetables, herbs and fruit trees. i am planting daily and touching the soil until it responds to my care. i am cleaning the clutter in our house and recycling. i am sharing what i learn about the expanding kalooban, what it takes to cross to an afterlife, and knowing one’s consciousness becomes a link to those whose minds can still be reached.

going organic means many things to us. for me it is simply living and loving well.

ang tampipi ng isang babaylan

2008-11-26T18:04:00.000-08:00

ang tampipi ng isang babaylan ay symbolic at mahiwaga . heto ang sinulat ko nung 2006 at binalikan ngayun. relevant pa kaya ito? basahin.

"noon 1980 pa, marami akong naipong lihim, mula sa mga pagkilos sa hanay ng mga aktibista at mga nasa elite. nang nakarating ako sa europa,sa italya akong unang bumaba at nakapasok ako dahil sa isang salita : AMORE. tinanong ako ng passport control kung bakit ko gustong pumasok sa roma at yun ang sinagot ko. bumukas ang pinto. parang utos ni ali baba sa pagbukas ng kuweba.

hindi madaling magsilbing babaylan. ang pinakasusi dito ay kung makikilala kang babaylan ng mga tao. maaaring may kakayahan ka - mahusay sa pamumuno, mahusay sa paggagamot, matalas ang pangdama kung nasaan ang hudyat ng pagbabago, magaling humawak ng linya at magpasunod sa patakaran, atbp mga katangiang hinahasa ng kaysaysayan. subalit kung hindi nadarama ng tao na may malalim kang pagmamahal sa kapwa, hindi ka nila kikilalaning babaylan.

yung mga sinulat ni Zeus Salazar ay nakakatulong maintindihan ang mga gawain ng babaylan. matagal din akong nagbasa nito subalit nang tinawag na ako ng masa na babaylan, hindi ko matanto,sa simula, ang lawak at lalim ng tungkulin nito.misteryo pa sa akin ito. halimbawa ,yung "definition of the babaylan sa sinulat mo leny " a woman who can access the spirit realm and other states of consciousness and traffic easily in and out of these worlds" - ito ay isa sa mabigat na kakayahan. ang navigation of the human and sublime worlds ay hindi " traffic easily in and out ". para sa akin at sa karanasan ko. it is terrifying if you have no love for a Divine Being, or love for the people you serve. once you break loose from the moorings of a logical mind, you are in great risk of losing your mind. more of this when we cross the paths that lead to the unknown.

pero bakit nga ba sa mga lumad at mga katutubo, ang katalonan o babaylan ay nakikilala sa kanilang galing sa panggagamot ? kung ihahabing sa gawain ng mga nasa development NGO tulad ng mga doctors withour borders, kasing halaga rin ba yun? yjung bagang mga doctors ay babaylan din ?

ako, nagsisimula sa pagiging tao dahil may hindi tao at may ibang tao sa sikolohiyang pinoy. ang turing natin sa sarili kapag kumakatok ay "Tao po." bakit ? kung kilala kang tao,magbubukas. kung ibang tao ka, pakikitunguhan kang bisita subalit ibang tao ka pa rin at hindi ganap ang pagpapakilala.

sa madaling salita, kung papasok na ang usaping panggagamot, nariyan ang usaping pagiging ganap na tao. sa sikolohiya, maraming kataga subalit hindi kasing talas ng wikang sinapupunan. kapag ako'y nagtuturo ng mga usaping pangkababaihan, isang salitang problematik sa akin ay feminista. sa tunggalian ng isip at wika, ano ba ang may kabuhulan, yun may kahulugan sa pang-araw -araw na buhay,di ba? hindi naman sa tinatanggalan ko ng timbang ang salita "feminista" pero kung magtuturo ka sa mga bata, yung payak ang gagamitin mo at yung nadarama ng mga bata ang kahulugan.

heto silip pa lang sa debate at misteryo natin. pero may mga panimulang hypotheses na. kung makakadaupang palad tayo, magkukuwento ako sa pangdama ng isang babaylan. kung may elite at masang pangdama, tama lang na magsilbi ayun sa kinamulatan subalit ako'y may sapantaha na hindi kailangan ang kategorya ng uri. sa pagtatawid, hindi kailangan ang uri sa mga mundong hindi pa nararating ng mga buhay dito sa lupa - yan ang misteryo.

osya, ipapadala ko rin ito kay chato para makuha natin ang mga tanung niya.sa akin nagtanung ng address ni chato ang isis. nagsms ako sa kanila at binigay ang address sa roma.

mabuhay ka leny.

why we join bloggers

2008-11-26T17:17:00.000-08:00

young,golden & senior bloggers

today i met a sassy young blogger, izah morales of inquirer.net. she came to the green launch of eco academy in la mesa dam. there were politicians and business leaders in the launch but i saw this young woman izah with her camera when she boarded the electric car for our tour of the eco park. she has the shining eyes that psychologists like me look for when in a learning environment.

izah asked tony and beth de castro and me for a short interview on the eco academy. we gave her the storyline on ” nature as the teacher and the ecopark as the whole academy. everyone is welcome in the eco academy, no entrance requirements. any child, teacher, leader, parent, citizen can choose to study about nature e.g. composting, conservation, water management . people can have fun games while learning what is organic. “afterwards, izah asked me “are you a blogger ?” “of course” .” Ohh, could you tell me why you blog ? “

so i rattled of what blogging brings to me.”blogging is a platform for me to link up to friends i have not met and friends i met sometime in the past but lost touch. blogging is an activity that helps me write my experiences without being hemmed in by rules of composition. blogging allows me to get feedback in a short period of time after uploading it , instant reward which you don’t get in journal and magazine articles.”

“when did you start blogging? why?” pressed izah. ” i met a feminist, leny, online and she wanted an article on babaylans. she was composing a book on babaylans and she requested me to contribute. she offered to blog my story and asked me for my blogsite. ” i didnt have any at that time and she gave me her blogsite in blogger .com plus her password so we could converse in her blogsite. i read her blogs and started writing a few lines on babaylanship. that was two years ago. now i have four blogsites and i try to blog weekly. my husband ed blogs daily and he has a big blogging circle now.”

smiling, i described our generation as senior bloggers conversing online to catch shining eyes like hers. young bloggers lead the scene but golden women and senior citizens like ed are catching up and enjoying the blogging platform. for us, it is like being in a open source community whose ideas and imagination are illuminating the creative commons, a term we use in knowledge circles.

izah and her generation are lucky to have open source platforms for their ideas and advocacies. the web generation have better channels in communication.they can link to millions by entering the web and get good feedback from their peers and other generations who collaborate in cyberspace. my daughter ayen does her homework in mathematics and chemistry online. she uses social networks well and has thousands of her photos uploaded so she can share her milestones to a wider public. that for me is an achievement, a resource her generation and izah’s could cultivate to a high level of inclusivity and connectivity. golden citizens like me and ed are grateful that it is also available to us. mabuhay ang mga bloggers!

2008-11-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

2008-11-17T07:51:00.000-08:00

Iluminadas in our life

2008-11-17T07:49:00.000-08:00

iluminadas everywhere

Posted November 17, 2008 by mvillariba
Categories: Babaylan, Psychology, Spirituality

am fascinated with enlightenment in this life. most budhhists and other religions believe that enlightenment is possible within one’s lifetime. when i was a child, my first lesson was that only saints can achieve this tru martyrdom. i often prayed in front of saints and only when i got to learn about other spiritual journeys did i saw illumination in many senses.

let me narrate core concepts from experiences and reflection. illumination or light is a scientific concept which takes many meanings. strictly , it is light as contrasted to darkness. if you use your mind as the starting point, the brain sees and the optic nerve serves as the delivery lens. but in neuroscience or brain studies, visual ability is in 30 sites, not just in our two eyes but inside all our senses. many experiments with the blind, both congenitally blind and injured retinas indicate visual capacity in pathways identified as neurons and synapses. in simple terms, blind people can be rewired to see.

my own experience is in knowing or sensing people whom i have not met face to face. how is this possible? i cannot fully explain it but there is a right and left brain theory that develops the theory of consciousness. the literature is rich with stories of people who are -pre-cognitives, people who sense a future event, or see people they will meet in the future, or sense feelings from afar. there are projects funded by the CIA and like minded agencies which use psi energies and train people to do remote sensing or spying. i chance upong reports on stargate which have been declassified and can be found online.

just last week, a friend, alex umali, texted me for help. his niece was shot in the head andwas comatose. i gave him assurance that i will pray for her, for as along as it takes to get his niece to survive. after two weeks, alex called to thank me for helping and validating what i told him about his niece. his niece was awake now and moving her right hand. she was shot in seattle and i only had her name. alex told me that he asked 18 people to pray for her. he described us as being totally different from each other but all accepted to pray.he was happy and became a believer. “now, i have put up a poster on my wall, telling me what is possible in this life.”

other friends had similar requests but they are still in progress and my iluminada energies are running still. so will keep blogging until the desired outcome is manifesting.

ka-looban,our expanding healing community

2008-10-03T20:30:00.000-07:00

Ka-looban,our expanding healing community

today, i walked half a kilometer to get breakfast for ed and ayen.ayen has been reviewing for her chemistry exam and needed a good meal. our brains need a lot of protein and so i promised to get her enough food for her brain. as i walked to the the next village i saw all the litter of friday night. urban housing sites are called villages but we live in inner city sites and walking is not as pleasant as walking in green valleys or mountain trails. i suddenly remembered what meth jimenez told ed and i last night , she had been taking photographs of human colonies under bridges and one bridge alone had 250 people living in hanging cardboard huts. i can see them in my mind like human bats living literally upside down and out.

so i walk more and become mindful of kalooban - an expanded sense of self, inclusive of everyone. i see two mothers with their children taking some bread, dirty from sleeping rough. then as i came near my favorite acacia tree, i saw three young half naked men sleeping, cuddled up to the tree roots.they must have been drinking, to be so deep into sleep when everyone around them is busy making their way to earn. i look at the tricycle drivers making tunganga, who obviously will have to wait later for passengers since many are walking nowadays rather then pay P18 pesos. here in matalino street, everyone struggles for a place, the homeless and the hopeful who are looking for jobs as baristas, waiters, reflexologists and security guards.. this street is teeming with small business and you can smell, hear and see a variety of walkers.. i am glad i can expand my sense of kalooban. this is what walking is all about.

i reflect on another meaning of kalooban. ed and i called on a community to gather to heal oca francisco last night. i had been praying for a week and i did what i could to make oca my healee. i realized that oca could be healed by a community, not just by a battery of medical procedures but by arousing, mobilizing and organizing a collective resolution to get well. it worked and oca made that resolve to heal and work come january 2009. ” that is the way to heal” i told ed ” when you affirm your health is your priority and you declare it to a community who loves you.” oca thanked everyone for coming to the healing event and he told me that he was waiting for me to do my babaylan act. he thought i would go into some trance dancing to heal him. ” hoy oca , my act is performing tasks to raise money and i dont go into trance dancing,” i laughed and help him board the van so he can go home with pancho lara.”

the people i am referring to as a healing community whose kalooban is one with oca is in ed’s blog . i will thank those who planned and organized the fundraising with me : ed, pancho lara, alex soto, deng tan and june rodriguez. they did what they volunteered to do and i will pray they remain in good health always. i also want to thank elf’s new assistant leah whose first task was to help me run the auction. she must have been exhausted because i was always giving her running orders to keep collecting and recording the money from everyone. a silent auction is a lot of work when you have more than 25 items for sale and a hundred people are bidding around three tables. i told leah that once we put the items for auction, we have to tag the winners within the appointed time, collect the payments and wrap the items with a thank you bookmark. we collected around 120k and will collect more from those who had to bid via sms. that 120 k is a good start. i issued a call for a hundred people to give P5000 each, in kind or cash because we need 880k more to get oca on his workdesk by january. i trust kalooban will reign in the expanding community to heal oca. amen.

how to make our minds and bodies get better

2008-08-17T19:56:00.000-07:00

last week ed and i found some time to discuss our next project - helping translate all the neuroscience findings to leaders and families who want to live better lives. since last year, ed and i have been reading up on all the recent neuroscience studies and the latest books we got, john medina’s Brain rules and norman doidge ’s The Brain That Changes Itself got us very excited.

brain science has indicated that our brains can change, that it is plastic and that we can overcome injuries, be better at making our future greater than our past. doidge presents the history of brain science and provide various case studies where people with brain injuries, children with learning disorders and genetic deficits, people who had strokes and were paralyzed, people with addictions and phobias were able to regain normal lives by going through therapies that relied on the principles of neuroplasticity. one very inspiring case study is that of Barbara Arrowsmith Young who suffered when she was young because she was diagnosed as retarded in the 1950’s. she discovered in her own life that she has exceptional abilities within her so called ‘”retardation” and went through her primary and secondary education by memorizing everything. she literally built herself a better brain as she grew up and now she is one of the leading learning specialists in Canada , running a special school the Arrowsmith School for treating learning difficulties in chlidren and adults ( one can visit their website by searching arrowsmith school).

the book Brain Rules of john medina has been reviewed by my husband, ed dela torre ,in his blogs so i wont go into it in this blog. what is important is that the rule of remembering for building short term memory and long term memory are in memory exercises developed by barbara arrowsmith. mental training is very important and that the brain produces acetylcholine - a chemical essential for learning. in simpler terms, “our brain is like a muscle that grows with exercise.”

going to our daily routines at home, ed and i realized that we blog almost daily and this blogging is part of our mental exercises. by blogging regularly , we get our neurons to grow which leads to sharpened perception and memory, increase thinking speed and avoid boring tasks. in lay women’s terms, mental exercises make our brains work better at all the things we do for life. my mind has developed several mind maps - one for navigating family life, another for making community events inspiring, and a third, for communicating beyond this life. all these three maps i keep nurturing so that i can live well and love better. in my own brain, i keep growing - that is what i am and who i am, stronger and inspired.

ed and i hope that ayen will learn what we are learning now - the discoveries of neurosciences and its gifts to our life. ayen keeps asking us if it were Ok to focus on psychology and not proceed to medicine ” you will be both too old when i finish my degree in psychology, what more if i go through another five years in medicine” she agonizes. ” We smile and tell her ” keep your dreams and find your own niche. life offers various challenges and as long as you keep learning and feeling passionately , we are happy with who you are, at any stage of your life.” we want ayen to grow her own mind maps and find happiness with challenges she choose to fulfill

ginhawa ,mother of urduja

2008-08-09T18:37:00.000-07:00

Ginhawa, Mother of Urduja , in her Gayang Home

Ginhawa, star child of Cambrian Age was reared by Apo Namalyari. Apo Namalyari , the Supreme Creator, created life from its paradise Gayang. In Gayang, Ginhawa was nurtured with all the bounty of the sea and lived in a stromatolite garden ( from the Greek word 'mattress '), the oldest of all stones, being 3.5 billion years old. Ginhawa learned early to tend to blue green algae Cyanobacteria, in stromatolite's inner core. Blue green algae emit oxygen to the atmosphere and allow aerobic beings to thrive on a landless ocean.

Gayang is the place where you find life in its grandest start. Gayang is full of stromatolite ocean stones. In each stone, three billion beings inhabit it and more are produced as the universe stir earth's life's brew of carbon, hydrogen,oxygen and nitrogen. Gayang also has sulfur, phosphorus, calcium, iron. That is why it is the richest nursery of life when the earth was still a landless ocean sphere.

Ginhawa loved cyanobacteria, the blue green algae in Gayang. The stromatolites is their seeding bed and they are happiest in these stone mattresses.

Apo Namalyari taught Ginhawa how to care for the algae,"Cyanobacteria are aquatic and photosynthetic, that is, they live in the water, and can manufacture their own food. Because they are bacteria, they are quite small and usually unicellular, though they often grow in colonies large enough to see. They have the distinction of being the oldest known beings, living for more than 3.5 billion years. It may surprise you that the cyanobacteria will be around for as long as there is life in Gayang; they are one of the largest and most important groups of bacteria on earth."

Apo Namalyari continued " The cyanobacteria have been tremendously important in shaping Gayang and its climate throughout earth 's history. The oxygen atmosphere that you rely on was generated by numerous cyanobacteria during the Archaean and Proterozoic Eras. Before that time, the atmosphere had a very different chemistry, unsuitable for life as we know it today. " That is why ",Apo Namalyari gently told Ginhawa "I had to bring you here to grow blue green algae in Gayang."

For Apo Namalyari , the greater lesson of growing cyanobacteria is the production of plants. The chloroplast with which plants make food for themselves is actually a cyanobacterium living within the plant's cells. Because they are photosynthetic and aquatic, cyanobacteria was called by Apo as " food for the gods. "

When Ginhawa tasted the plants that Apo N offered, the whole ocean floor became a table laden with food. Apo Namalyari decided that cyanobacteria and all the bacteria will compete in a contest of creating life parts, plants and animals. Ginhawa was delighted and Apo Namalyari called on the diwatas to organize the contest. The contest was called Cambrian .

Life and Love Lucena version

2008-07-06T20:51:00.000-07:00

Life and Love in a Learning City

ed delatorre

Posted July 5, 2008 by Edicio dela Torre
Categories: Family and Friends, Lifelong Learning, Migration

This weekend, Girlie, Ayen, and Ed are in Lucena City for a gathering of the Villariba clan. We are celebrating the 60th wedding anniversary of Cesar Viilariba and Flotilda Collantes - Tatay Iba and Nanay Nene.

The 60 years of loving partnership has produced 13 children (Girlie is the second child, the first girl), and as of today, 44 grandchildren (including two partners) and 5 great-grandchildren.

As our contribution to the anniversary celebration, Girlie and Ed co-edited a book of Tatay’s essays on education and historical vignettes, with some contributions from the Villariba children and their partners: Girlie and Ceres (the doctor of the family) wrote about Nanay Flotie. Mina, our newest PhD, wrote on caring for the earth in crisis. Sonny, the eldest, wrote a piece on the future of the coconut. Girlie and I compiled some of our blogs under the theme of “Lucena as a Learning City” and on “Learning into the 21st Century.”

After a series of brainstorms, the book title we decided on is Life and Love in a Learning City: The Villariba Clan of Lucena.

The title bears the influence of Stephen Covey’s statement that all human beings want to achieve four things: To Live. To Love. To Learn. To Leave a Legacy.

The other influence is the idea of a “Learning City” which I brought home from a conference on lifelong learning in Korea, and which Girlie and I have been advocating to the educational institutions and the city government of Lucena. We hope that one of the Villariba legacies is for Lucena to declare itself a learning city and develop the corresponding programs for it.

One of the ideas Girlie is exploring for Lucena as a learning city is “glocalization.” How do we develop the potential combination of Lucena residents with the overseas migrant communities of former Lucena residents? It is not just remittances and investments we should be thinking of, though they are part of this combination. More important are the ideas and skills and other learning resources.

Even among the 13 Villariba children, there is already room for exploration. Melo lives and works in San Francisco USA; he came home with Maebel and their two children Mikey and Kathy to celebrate their own 25th wedding anniversary. Deeda also came home from New Jersey, with Jason and their two children Jillian and Julia. Heidi and Bobby came home after decades of living and working in Arizona, but their two children Olivia and Kathrine are studying in New York. Caloy has worked for a time in the Middle East, and is preparing to return there. One of Liza’s sons, Peter, is working as a male nurse in Scotland.

Come to think of it, even Girlie and I have spent more than four years in Europe, working with Philippine solidarity groups and Pinoy migrant communities.

During the anniversary mass at the Carmelite monastery chapel, Obie’s wife Corcor was constantly in tears. I thought she was just being sentimental, since I also felt a surge of feelings when Iba and Nene slowly walked down the aisle, while the Enverga University choir sang “The Impossible Dream.” But afterwards, she explained that she was thinking of her mother and father who have both passed away, and missing them.

I could relate to that. In the swirl of clan celebrations and the clicks of digital cameras and celfones, my mind would travel from time to time to Naujan, where my mother is bed-ridden with her diabetes and wounded foot. Our nuclear family is so small, just my mother and sister Yen who is there with her now. But she will soon have to leave, back to the work that awaits her in Puerto Rico.

At least my mother has eight brothers and sisters, and two of them, Bel and Foy, both unmarried, give time to be with her. A brother, Delfin, also stays in Naujan half of the year, when he is not with his children in the USA; he drops by regularly. Two sisters, Dely and Remy are now visiting from Canada and the USA.

Between thoughts of Naujan and Lucena, I could appreciate the sermon of Bishop Marquez who begged off from a mass scheduled in Manila to preside over the anniversary mass. I thanked him afterwards. He graciously replied, “This is a rare event.”

He dwelt at length on how having many children are a blessing. For those who chose to have only one or a few children, he cited a quote from a parent (though in another context): “Babawi na lang kami sa aming anak.”

Parts of his sermon got me thinking about population policy and the church’s official position. But I brushed away my reactions and instead thought of my eldest son Yeyi, who lives and works in Singapore. Her loving wife Minette is into the seventh month of carrying twin sons in her womb. I wonder how many more children they will plan to have.

At the lunch program which we co-emceed, Girlie asked me to reprise an idea we explored some years back for our good friends Cha and Chuchi. They were activists who didn’t want a civil or church ceremony, despite their devout parents’ pleas. Finally, they arrived a compromise, as a first step. (Years later, they eventually agreed to a formal wedding).

We asked ourselves then “What are wedding ceremonies for?” The loving, courting, and intimacy are mainly private, best done and appreciated by the partners involved. What do governments and churches have to do with this?

The idea we worked on is this: Before there were governments and churches, there were communities, even wider than family and clan. It is to these communities that partners present themselves, to seek acceptance and support for their love and commitment. Later, at formal weddings, it is these communities that governments and churches are supposed to represent.

Today was not just a clan celebration. It was a celebration of a community, of friends and colleagues in what we hope will be our shared dream of a learning city.

Healthy Food and Angelworms

2008-06-18T07:23:00.000-07:00

we keep complaining of the high cost of living. now that our gasoline bills are skyrocketing and everything else gets expensive, we need to think how we can afford to eat healthy and live well. my friends, tony and beth de castro have found the answer to a healthy and fulfilling life - caring for angelworms and growing organic food.

let me share about soilmates, yes SOIL MATES - the mates who produce black gold. lydia ,beth’s friend, coined the term while listening to tony and beth. with the food situation becoming worse, we must think of how to grow our own food and insure healthy food in our table. the solution lies with the angle worms, specifically the culture that they have brought to the earth a million years ago. worms are wonderful beings because they renew everything, from poison to bad bacteria into useful minerals - all the 27 minerals that life thrives on in this earth.

if i were an alien and wanted to find out how life is on this earth, i will take the angelworms. tony shared all the the research he found when starting to farm with the angleworms. he told us about the experiments with worms being fed with food injected with e-coli and salmonella. the worm’s shit was clear of any e-coli and salmonella bacteria. then they fed the worms with animal and human wastes. do you know what they found? the worms produced grade A bacteria that helped renewed soils that were depleted of minerals.think of your poso negro getting cleaned by worms without any service fees.

but the most important thing is that any land that has been abandoned /exploited,depleted and where plants fail to grow, the worms can renew in a short period of time, attracting good bacteria that spurs plant growth. the principle is simple - when the soil is healthy, the plants grow. feed the soil, and it will feed us. that is what angelworms do - they feed the soil with their shit and piss. so what do we feed the worms with ? everything that is biodegradable -our garbage! imagine all the garbage we produce and they recycle it into BLACK GOLD. from human waste to animal waste, from decaying food, kitchen waste to all the grass that is on our land - rice stalks,cogon stalks, name it, they will feed on it when in the stage of decomposition. when you walk in virgin forests and find the smell of moist soil, that’s the odor that healthy soil emits. that’s the odor of the shit the worms evict from their bodies. that’s the odor of black gold. amoy lupa is a most wonderful scent.

so why are we not caring for worms? why are we not mining the black gold that they produce ? because we are into fossil culture - we want oil, we eat oil, we breath oil. urea, the fertilizer that agrifarms use all over the world is made from natural gas. we have been brainwashed that it is the only fertilizer for our plants and that the world cannot be fed unless our farms are using UREA. but now that many lands have been depleted of its natural minerals, urea cannot solve the problem. besides the price of urea goes high everythime the oil prices go up the skies. so every time there is a price hike in oil, there is food price hike too.

but that is not all - our HEALTH MAINTENANCE price goes up too, what with all the chemicals in our food! when our food is fertilized with urea, we eat the urea too. when the food is sprayed with pesticides, we eat the pesticides too. we eat chemicals - gasoline and dioxine and all the chemicals sprayed to rid plants of pests but they still get into our food. the chemicals get rid of us too by contracting cancer and all those incurable diseases. even flower enthusiasts get cancer from growing orchids and other flowers sprayed with pesticides.

so what do we do? let’s get worms growing in our backyards. let’s do zero waste garbage with worms composting. lets plant healthy food and grow them with vermicast and vermitea ( worm shit and piss) in our own gardens and idle lands.

let’s do it now! contact tony and beth. buy the vermicast, 30 pesos per kilo and renew your gardens this week. buy a kilo of worms with a 10 day food supply for P1100 from tony and beth. the one kilo of worms will serve your garden for 10 years. your angel worms will multiply every day, 1000 worms will be 2000 worms each day until all the biodegradable food in your house, in your street, in your community ,even in your town or city will be zero-waste. you can produce more than 10-12 kilos of vermicast for every worm bed you make. what you feed the worms, you get in exact weight in their shit.

LEARN the business sense of organic culture - you can sell the worms, the vermicast, vermitea, the organic plants, the organic vegies, herbs, fruits, flowers ,even organic rice! tony and beth started as professors of literature and psychology. now they are farmers and entreprenuers. they are happy and spiritually connected with the land. their lifestyle is something to copy and replicate.

VISIT ECOPARK, LA MESA DAM, ANGELWORM SANCTUARY. 9 am to 4 pm. look for rogelio and the angelworm sanctuary farmers. you can invite tony and beth for a short term learning session with your club or association. they can also design your community gardens and enliven the social life of your children by including them in the design and execution of healing gardens.

Cesar &Flotilda Villariba, 60 years of loving

2008-05-05T21:22:00.000-07:00

this 8th of may 2008, my mother Nene and father Cesar will be celebrating 60 years of married life together. we plan to have the celebration on july 5 so everyone can join us,especially our siblings in the US. i am awed by six decades of their lifelong love. i wish i can live that long with ed but am already 57 and ed is turning 65. if we count our married life to 28 years, we need 32 years together to reach this 60th milestone. that’s something to look forward to but i dont want to press God to get us living beyond what we can allow our bodies and hearts to bear… but how and what does it take to be married for 60 years and be faithfully loving and committed ?

intimacy and commitment are at the core of my parents’ love. this commitment to be together is a lot of energy and they give this love daily to each other. i see them waking up early at 4 am and help each other prepare for a 6 am mass. they have breakfast and go to work at 7 am. until my mother had a stroke in 2003, she would go to school with my father. my father never stopped teaching in Enverga university until last week when his emeritus status as dean was celebrated by the whole university. he started teaching in 1948 and this year 2008 we all honored his teaching contribution to the university and the city - six decades as a teacher! but i should stress that my mother, a teacher herself, made it possible for my father to work for 60 years. she managed all his schedules and served as the life events manager.

what does lifelong loving entail ? i will answer this from the stories and reflections i gathered from my parents, from my siblings and the communities my parents cultivated.

my father saw my mother when she was only 11 years old. he was barely 17 and found her very beautiful. he did not court her then but remembered her face which has not fully blossomed into a young woman. in 1943, the war started and many girls had to go into hiding to escape the japanese soldiers. nene went into hiding in tagbakin hills with her parents. cesar was recruited as a soldier while he was still in UP los banos. he was assigned to defend the towns from pagbilao to atimonan. in the tagbakin hills, cesar saw nene and introduced himself. he expressed his affection and promised nene he would return to court her. right after the war, cesar found nene and courted her. in 1948, they got married in simple rites. nene was orphaned by the war and cesar became her family. they had two children, sonny and girlie (i was named girlie as the first daughter). being future-oriented, cesar decided to apply for a scholarship to earn a masters and doctorate degree in Columbia University,New York. nene and the two kids brought cesar to Manila to board the SS Pres. Wilson for a one month journey to San francisco. each day at sea, cesar wrote nene and sonny and girlie. for three years, nene and cesar kept their love growing with letters and photographs. this 1951-53 letters became cesar’s journal and he poured all his feelings and dreams in these love letters. reading them transported me to another decade and the lives my parents struggled with. reading them made me reflect how good it was for my parents to pursue their higher studies and the struggles my mother took on to rear a family single-handedly during the time my father was overseas. many overseas parents will benefit from my mother’s experiences as parent.

i only found out about these letters from my sister heidi recently. nanay showed heidi the folders and i told her to read them. when i came home this may, heidi turned over the folders to me and it took four nights to read them the 1951 letters. i still have to peruse the 1952-53 letters. unfortunately, nene only saved the letters of cesar. but as i read the letters, i could still discern what nene wrote from the questions and thoughts of cesar. i found many spiritual and social gems in their letters. it will take a book to share the stories they exchanged with each other. their narratives are a rich source of lucena’s history in the 1950’s and what it took to build enverga’s university’s foundation as a teaching center in southern luzon.

healing love and busy heaven

2008-04-20T00:24:00.001-07:00

i have a friend who keeps missing her beloved. she has been talking to her beloved daily. sometimes she feels her presence and sometimes she doesnt. lets call this friend liwanag and her beloved carissa.

flash back: i met liwanag some years back when she was a rising star in the feminist women’s network. she is very articulate and has taken on public health advocacy as her mission. she met carissa while working in the UN and they fell in love. after living in the West, carissa had cancer and she died last year. liwanag went into mourning and still is grieving. i saw liwanag this year and had a conversation with liwanag. this conversation elicited a response from carissa, or shall i say a series of responses from the afterlife.

i dont know how people beyond this life choose who to talk with and how. i presume their choices are guided by what they need. when i found myself being in conversation with carissa, i felt a joy that i could sense her. since i never knew her in the usual sense, my meeting her fills me with ginhawa. liwanag was very happy that there is a person like me to link up with. i had a long date with liwanag and carissa came.

after a month of being quiet, carissa whispered to check on liwanag. so i called liwanag. “wow, i just finished working and wanted to call carissa” responded liwanag. she had been missing carissa but didnt want to call me. “am a bit hesitant to bother you” liwanag told me. “oh you dont need to feel that because it’s a joy for me to help” i assured liwanag. liwanag wanted to find out why carissa has not been responding to her calls. i smiled and offered her an explanation ” people beyond this life have busy lives ,too, and carissa must be working on something she loves.” liwanag laughed “talaga ?, does that mean she is not ignoring me?” she continued. “my dear, what i hear is that they even go to learn and study in universities” i elaborated. this conversations continued and i turned my other sense to check if carissa would affirm my explanations. did she? liwanag requested me to send a message to carissa . i did if she will give me a flower’s name to link the conversation.

flowers are a favorite love offering. i asked carissa to respond with a flower and i texted liwanag to buy tulips for carissa. ” carissa loves tulips but where will i get them ?” moaned liwanag. ” there are many flowershops like holland tulips that carry tulips”i laughed. “i had bought her everlasting flowers from baguio” offered liwanag “but a nephew said that is soo cheap”. ‘yes’, carissa didnt like those everlasting flowers even if you wanted it to last.” i said. “i will do anything just to get her to talk to me” promised liwanag. ‘well then, get the tulip even if you can find only one” i persuaded her.

why am i engaging liwanag? am i helping her, knowing she is in mourning ? i hope so and i believe healing love is what i tap into when sensing people in the afterlife. i also believe that heaven is as busy as we can imagine. whenever i get images from beyond , i offer healing love and request affirmations. ed sometimes would ask how i get the messages ” do you hear their voices?” ” i get images and words like sms while awake ” i shared,”" and they become coherent when i listen carefully.” sometimes, i dream of the people who passed onwards and the dreams are easy to recall.

is heaven really busy ? i hope so because whenever i get messages, they describe activities like reading, making music, travelling and give me a feeling of something happening. just the other night, i had a dream that tita daisy unson, delia unson’s mother, was telling me about the books she has been reading.

if our life on this earth is full of meaningful work, maybe the next life will build on the good things we started. isnt that what heaven can be? buddha was said to describe heaven as inside us. ginhawa is a term synonymous to inner bliss. perhaps my receiving affirmations from beyond is due to active imagination but i feel the kalooban that we all have allows us to receive what God provides, pinagkakaloob ng Diyos. the filipino kalooban can include mysteries. i believe that this is where our deepest spiritual energies develop.

a babaylan's commencement

2008-04-17T19:21:00.000-07:00

my loved ones and friends, let us commence into a babaylan’s moment. for these are the times that test our spirit’s robustness. these are the seasons of hope and peril. am discerning what the season will bring to our families here and overseas. the switch for this insight is my babaylan’s moment of discernment.

let me commence on how i arrived at a babaylan’s moment. last march 28,2008, i participated in 61st commencement rites of Manuel S.Enverga University Foundation. 248 students from high school and elementary would commence their journey to lifelong learning. i was invited to give the graduation speech. it was my first commencement rite invitation from Enverga U.. naturally, i asked bigger questions : what will these students’s future be in Lucena ? how will they dream and how will these dreams be realized?

a day earlier, i lost my voice due to working nonstop from energizing an OFW forum in la union on monday to helping ed in an accident in wednesday in guisguis, sariaya and monitoring a family’s crisis the whole month of march. everyone in the family came to my aid - my mother Nene offered to read my speech. my daughter Ayen suggested she could take my place. my aunt Fedy cooked a whole pot of salabat so i could recover my voice. my sister Jojie said she could help with audio-visuals. Ed told me to rest the whole day but i told everyone, i would honor the students and give them a good speech. i told them that it is the first time my alma mater has invited me to be the commencement speaker. the lst time i gave a speech in MSEUF HS was as valedictorian 42 years ago. having lost my voice, i prepared a powerpoint presentation. i made notes on lifelong learning and what lifetime growth laws the students should embrace. i observed a whole day of silence and used gestures to communicate. i went to bed early.

around 1 am on the day of commencement, i woke up. i looked at my alarm clock and it wasn’t ringing. someone was talking to me and i decided to listen. then words came like sms in my head.it was a babaylan’s moment. after an hour of listening, i tested my voice. a nasal sound came and i could form words without my voice splintering. i realized the babaylan’s voice was forming even if my own vocal chords were still quiet… so i went back to sleep.

on graduation morning, i put on my filipiniana dress and did my meditation. i was excited and everyone came to accompany me - my parents Cesar & Nene, Ayen, Jojie and her daughters plus our brightest grandchild, two year old Andrea in a red dress. my daughter Ayen told me not to give a long speech. i smiled because she tells her father the same when she tags along when ed give his talks.

i opened my talk by greeting the people as datu, panday,kawal and babaylan. instead of addressing eminent people as deans or principals, i used babaylan and datus, including my father who sat in the line of honor. i spoke in tagalog and introduced my greetings as that of the babaylan. i brought the whole community to the time of the babaylans and datus. gave them images with which they could imagine what it was like to be governed by babaylan and datus, to be served by panday and to protected by kawal. i lightened up the narrative with a rephrased aphorism ” those who dont looked back to their roots had stiff necks” and cannot see the future.

i asked everyone - students, parents and teachers who they knew as babaylans and pandays. some raised their hands that they know Hermano Pule as a hero but not as a babaylan. most said yes when i mentioned fernando poe’s iconic role as panday. having established that our people came from a long line of datu, panday, kawal and babaylan, i segueway into declaring the times and age as one of complexity. that women and men, parents and children have to develop the courage to be deeply human - to have a mahusay na pagkatao and learn well the art of pakikipagkapwa-tao. i asked how many of the graudates dream of becoming doctors ? very few hands. teachers? very few hands. make money and become rich ? all raised their hands.

make your purpose bigger than your money…i described the world as very challenging and demanding. - the babaylan’s agimat or mutya of kalooban, malawak na pakikipagkapwa-tao, and matibay na pananampalataya sa Diyos. these three would insure that the students and their parents will realize a meaningful life in a complex world. being pinoy and marunong makiramdam at makipagkapwa-tao would take care of lifelong learning. having a deep faith in God would help them develop the babaylan’s gift of vision.

as closing, i taught everyone to feel their energy and charge their bio- batteries by using the hand and finger energy spheres .i taught them the rain clap and as the sounds of two finger clapping began to rise, i did my yin yang nafas so that the energy would embrace everyone. everyone had the energy to go through the five hour rites in the midst of a very hot summer’s day. ginhawa sa lahat.

Eating as a spiritual rite and TMG

2008-04-17T19:16:00.000-07:00

i give thanks when i get spiritual messages from my body. this sunday, i developed TMG - temporamandibularjoint syndrome. i couldnt chew in my left jaw and even yawning is difficult. i tried rotating my tongue and opening my mouth. it is so hard that i have to help my jaw manually to open and close. my mind started tracing what could be the cause of TMG. ed googled TMG and found many causes, from wrong posture to stress. since i could not chew and grind food, i got the blender ready and pureed my meals. ohh, i felt as if i am a baby again. then i started enjoying the pureed fruits, combining papayas and bananas with lemon and honey. blended food does taste good and ed offered to puree chicken and rice. “Would that taste good?” i asked. “You wait and i will serve it. Inay likes it very much when i feed her this mashed chicken and rice.” ed replied. well, it is a good meal and it satisfied my craving.

now what is my body telling me with this TMG ? i even asked a friend nivah who had TMG. nivah said she talked to her jaw and listened to what it told her- that it was in pain because she has not been mindful of her health. ” how did you get it”,i wanted to know. “grinding my teeth while asleep” nivah explained. nivah t said her dentist had to make her wear a splint so that she could stopped the TMG from becoming severe. i spent two days being mindful of my TMG and even stopped eating solid food. i requested a therapist,hilda, to massage my face and get my neck relaxed. she used 6 heated stones to align my energies. she massaged my face with the stones. i told her the heat from the stones were soothing and she kindly lent me two stones for my care.

now whenever i sit in the dinner table and watch Ayen, Ed and other people eat, i am thankful that they are healthy and that there is good food to be shared. i think of Inay eating well despite her diabetes and painful foot. i think of all my siblings and nieces, nephews and cousins feasting and enjoying good meals together. i think of everyone in the country eating. i think of overseas friends feasting. eating is an enjoyable spiritual rite - especially it is done at least three times a day. that is why communion is the time everyone, especially the young and old, want to participate and be part of during spiritual masses.

thank God for all the food we get. thank God in our jaws and in our enzymes. thank God for moving the energy in our muscles and bones. thank God we can receive daily communion. food is spirit. amen.

my teacher,DON PRADES

2008-04-04T20:48:00.000-07:00

DON PRADES ,my teacher

His LETTERS from THE HEART to me

LUCENA

Lucena has always been one of my favorite places. I've been to many places, lived and worked in many countries and Lucena has always been among the top for it was there where I first started my career as an educator. It was there where I first experienced what teaching was all about and what an enriching experience it was.....thanks to the bright, charming and beautiful 12-year-olds who were eager to learn just like yourself. For being in Lucena, I was blessed and I am a better person because of it. That much I know. That much I am sure of.

MICRONESIA, GUAM, SAUDI ARABIA

After Lucena, I went to the U.S. Trust Territory of the Pacific now known as the Republic of Micronesia. I taught at Maryknoll and Jesuit schools there. Then I travelled to Saipan, Guam, The Marshalls and then to Hawaii where I studied at the East-West Center, University of Hawaii. I studied TESL, Teaching English as a Second Language.

After my studies I went back to the Philippines and taught at my old Alma Mater, the Ateneo de Naga. After the Ateneo, I left teaching and joined Procter & Gamble PMC as a salesman. I stayed at Procter and Gamble for five years and left as a Unit Manager and became a Branch Manager of Metro Drug Corporation. In the interim I also got married and the year was 1970. Then I transferred to another company- Massey Firguson as a Sales Manager. From 1970 to 1980 I got two boys and a daughter and decided it was time to move on yet again. I went back to teaching this time at the Arabian American Oil Company(ARAMCO) in Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil company with over 65,000 employees. I was rated as an excellent teacher (sounds familiar?) by the company and sent me to school at Florida State University where I finished my Masters in Multi-lingual Education, all paid for by the company.

CANADA

Of course after Florida I went back to ARAMCO to teach as stipulated in the contract. In 1988, it was time to move on yet again, so we decided to immigrate to Toronto, Canada where my kids are well established now. My eldest son is the IT Manager of General Motors, Canada. My second son is in Dubai as a consultant with Dubai International Airport. At the moment I am in Dubai with him spending my Christmas break. My youngest, a daughter is an insurance adjuster in Toronto and she's getting married in 2008. I think I'm blessed and I'm grateful.

KUWAIT

How did I end up in Kuwait? After living for 10 years in Canada, I found the unforgiving Canadian winters unbearable. I decided to go back to the Middle East. I was hired as an English teacher (my old trade) at the Kuwait Military School of Languages. After three months I was promoted as head of the English Department at the Joint Command and Staff College where I supervised English teachers from the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. I immensely enjoyed my job. When the American University of Kuwait opened 4 years ago, I was invited to be part of the pioneer English teachers at the university. Only Americans and Canadians are hired to teach English. Last year I was being promoted as the director of the Intensive English Department but I declined the offer. I told them that I've been there, done that thing and that I am happy as a plain teacher. The younger teachers thought I was crazy for declining the promotion. Girlie, I am not 22 years old anymore...and I'm happy the way I am now. I'm thankful to the Almighty for letting me go this far. I can 't ask for anything more.

I AM A MIGRANT WORKER

I consider myself a pioneer Filipino migrant worker, after all I left the Philippines in 1964, not for economic reasons though, but more for intellectual and personal adventure or as you have stated in your last e-mail, “braingain.” I taught in Maryknoll and Jesuit mission schools in the Pacific and the salary was minuscule compared to what I was earning in the Philippines but what a ride it was. It was an adventure of a life time. The students were raw….and they fought with spears. In fact in one of such fights we had to take a student to the hospital with the spear still sticking out of his shoulder. Another time when a biology teacher asked for some specimens, one student brought a baby crocodile which he caught in the swamps on his way to school. But of course these incidents were the exception. Most of them were willing to learn just like my students in the Philippines. I started the school paper which we published quarterly and we sent copies to the benefactors of the Mission in the U.S. and they were surprised that our students could speak and write English very well. I was also able to visit other Pacific islands as well where the men still wore loincloth and the women were topless and wore grass skirts. Immodest dress for the women was to bare their ankles….go figure!! Over all, I loved the experience and if I had a chance I would do it all over again!

Later on I was able to study at the prestigious East-West Center at the University of Hawaii. So when I got back to the Philippines I was better equipped intellectually as an educator. The Philippines then was second to Japan in economic terms in our part of the world and there was no need for Filipinos then to leave the country in droves for economic reasons. If they left, more often than not the destination was the United States and most of them were medical people like doctors, nurses and medical technologists and many of the doctors came back and had successful practice in their homeland.

MARRIAGE PROPOSAL

About my memorable sojourn in the Pacific, I would like to make an addendum regarding one, perhaps unparalleled and unforgettable once in a lifetime experience. It was an incident that tickles me no end up to this day….44 years after it had happened.

Would you believe I got a very serious marriage proposal from the wealthiest family in the island? The proposal was made by the parents through an old Spanish Jesuit friend in the mission. The family got to know me at Church and through the Jesuits and the Maryknoll sisters. They thought I was a perfect match for their daughter. This family owned practically everything in the islands. Not just rich, but filthy rich. They had a shipping company, car dealerships, food dealerships and everything that the US Trust Territory of the Pacific needed. In fact at that time in 1964 during my first year there, the family bought a ship worth 4 million US dollars and they paid in cash. The Jesuits told me about this because they knew all the big business transactions of this family. Their daughter was at that time still in the US doing her studies but I met her during her summer vacations. She was gorgeous, part Japanese, German and islander. The parents were getting old so they wanted me to marry their only daughter so I could take over the business. If I didn’t like to stay in the islands, I could take their daughter to the Philippines and they would help me open a business there. Of course I got scared because at 24, I was not ready to get married…let alone to a beautiful multi- million dollar heiress! So I lied to the old Jesuit priest and I told him that I had a girlfriend in the Philippines and that I would get married when I got back home. I told him to thank the parents and that from the bottom of my heart I really appreciated and respected the offer and it was extremely hard to turn the offer down. Of course I did not have a girlfriend at that time. When the Maryknoll Sisters learned that I rejected the proposal, they were saddened and asked me to reconsider my decision. They told me that I just didn’t know what I was throwing away. Quite frankly, I knew exactly what I was throwing away but whether it was the right or wrong decision, that’s another story. But one thing is certain, it made my life richer in so many ways….brain gain perhaps?

MY FIRST LOVE

In 1980 in spite of the fact that career wise I was doing very well in sales and marketing as a Sales Manager, I left the Philippines again to go back to teaching which was my first love in the first place. By that time the Filipino worldwide diaspora was starting to peak.

ARAMCO (Arabian American Oil Company) at that time wasn’t sure whether Filipino professionals like teachers would be acceptable to the Saudis because most of the Filipinos in Saudi Arabia at that time were skilled laborers and maids although at that time ARAMCO already had Filipino professionals like engineers, accountants and computer experts but not teachers. The training department of the company was dominated by teachers coming from the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Great Britain and of course from the other Arab countries like Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt. We were actually the second batch, the first batch consisted of only around five teachers and ARAMCO was impressed so they wanted to hire more. The screening and recruitment were quite rigid. Of the 800 applicants, they hired only around 20 and I was one of them. We were sent to the different training areas and I was assigned in the headquarters of the company in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. We knew our predicament and we were aware that we were the guinea pigs. The hiring of more Filipino teachers in the future hinged on our success. Of course the Arab teachers were spooked by our arrival. Suddenly they had competition and they became insecure. We were scrutinized by everybody in the training department. To the credit of the group most of us passed the scrutiny with flying colors.

march with time,be the change you wish to happen

2008-03-04T18:55:00.000-08:00

this month of march, my time is dedicated to creating various modalities of change, both personal and political. there is a quote i particularly adhere to ” be the change you wish”. my work has been full of questions. ever since i started helping people heal themselves in the mid-90’s, i asked them what makes them overcome pain? i have learned that transforming oneself is a better way of communicating the change, from suffering to freedom.

suffering and mourning are two of the issues i deal with nowadays. i met a friend recently and she is still in mourning. her partner died of cancer last year and she wanted to know if i could help her. she had heard from two friends, noeleen heyzer and susanna george, that they got help from me and they recommended me. i was pleasantly surprised because i never thought i really healed them. i believed they had a metanoia, a transformation, and that led them to healing. but yes, i replied to my friend, i would listen to her. i asked for three days to prepare and set the date for our session. i requested she meditate for a full day and to remember the love she shared with her partner. when the day came for our session, we were ready to listen to each other. the precious thing happened, her love came and we had a threesome conversation and many questions were answered. it was one of the loveliest modalities i have ever been welcomed into - entering sacred space and listening to what the two lovers were saying. all three of us felt a deep sense of awe, and gratitude for the moment of grace. in an hour, the pain of grief eased and my friend went home feeling her love reciprocated and her questions answered. we promised to honor her beloved and to continue the conversations in sacred space.

what can the people who passed on teach us? many lessons in this life. one, honoring them is important. the life they lived in this world has value and they want us to remember them as persons, as loving persons. they also sense our own doubts, our confusions, and listen to our questions. i asked my friend if she talks to her beloved. “yes, every morning” she replied. the second significant lesson i got from helping communicate beyond : they remember everything, and they want to remind us of the precious things they did so we can build on their legacies. this is what i emphasize when dealing with grief and pain : there is a legacy and the work continues, that the grief is a source of energy and that moving on means fulfilling a mission. the third lesson: we can become the work in progress that our beloved have bequeathed to us. this is the time for us to be the progressive change we are looking for.

jun lozada and debridement

2008-02-20T17:06:00.000-08:00

yesterday, i was surfing, writing, texting and watching all the drama of jun lozada on television. as i listened to all the senators interrogate jun, i felt it was debriding jun. debridement is a medical procedure of cleaning dead tissues and bones, especially gangrene. if you have not seen gangrene, it is as black as coal. back in the old days, when one’s wound develops gangrene, the treatment is to scrape dead skin or amputate the leg . in our case, jun lozada’s expose has reached gangrenous stage but the administration senators and the palace spin doctors are treating him as if he is the gangrene. hence they are debriding him rather than the gangrene - the unmoderated greed. am talking of gangrene metaphor because of Inay who had her foot debridement . my doctor sister ceres told us that the feet get gangrenous because it is the farthest from the heart. as we age, cholesterol block arteries and veins and prevents oxygen from circulating, thus killing the tissues of the feet. that basically is what is happening in gangrenous feet of diabetics.

but let me go back to jun lozada . after his senate hearing last week, people took notice of the extent of gangrenous corruption . there have been one rally and two masses protesting against corruption. i found the slogan ” kung BAD ka, lagot ka, kung GOOD ka, lusot ka!” hilarious. i would have edited it as ” Kung gangrene ka, putol ka!”. but like gangrene, we have to look at the vital signs - the political pressures like blood pressure, going up and down, depending on how much oxygen is circulating.. when powerful patrons plunder the public chest, when politicians like cholesterol block justice, we are deprived of blood and oxygen.

so how do we get enough oxygen and start saving our nation from sepsis? we can start debridement, cutting the layers of corrupted tissues and strengthening the immune system - our citizens - in making decisions towards the kind of governance we deserve. we can take the recovery path of feeding our people the justice we need. Inay’s doctor, Dr. Romy Oabel, prescribed feeding her six times every three hours so that she will be strong enough for the debridement. let us prescribe feeding truth to our people, six times a day. let us encourage the media and those in the judiciary who still are free of unmoderate greed to feed us the truth and nothing but the truth, six times a day.

let us debrid gangrene collectively. let us save Inay from social sepsis. our nation can regenerate if we cut clean the dead tissues of greed.

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yayas,caregivers,health providers - top of the list

Posted February 16, 2008 by marianita villariba
Categories: Lifelong learning

today i salute all the yayas, caregivers and health providers - mostly girls and women who get to take care of us even when we dont match their passion and competence for caring. i say this because i have been caring for Inay Adang since last week and i realized that though i am intelligent, even blest with multiple intelligences, i cannot match the dexterity and sweet swiftness of the hands and hearts of Inay’s caregivers. ed and i volunteered to be the night shift last night for Inay. as i listened to the instructions on how we would provide Inay the care she needs, i realized that caregiving for geriatrics diabetics is a challenge. first is monitoring all the major signs - blood sugar, blood pressure, urine and stool output, state of pain, smell of gangrene, spread of infection - black as coal, etcetera. then we had to follow the pharmacy protocols. taking tests before and after meals, setting up the intravenous drips, giving the oral medicines, making sure that all the major medicines are taken and results noted. but the most difficult was making Inay eat, open her mouth,chew and swallow her food while she is in the middle of a fight against infection. ed and i tried all kinds of waking her, getting Inay to finish one banana, coaching her to drink and take 20 food supplements. everytime Inay would close her mouth and eyes, we would try to wake her and beat the clock feeding her because her blood sugar would be taken in four episodes. as we fed her, one of us would have to hold her two hands so that she doesnt scratch her infected foot nor take the bandage off and then lift her other leg so that it doesnt put pressure on the infected foot. the moment she rolls around the bed(with her other hand taking the IV drips), we have to unroll her and get all the beddings in place. now the plot thickens when Inay’s blood sugar and blood pressure goes high like a roller coaster ride. ed and i didnt know how to take her blood sugar and it was hospital policy that if we use our own blood sugar set, we should administer it ourselves. well, ed and i had to get the nurse to do it for us and paid the pharmacy for the set. how i wished jayzel, her caregiver was present to do it!

when the night shift midwife Sheile came, i took my breath and thought, ahh we can then go to sleep. but that was precisely what we couldnt do. Sheile told me that we should help monitor any change in Inay’s behavior .since she was making the rounds, she could only run to our aid if we call her. so i calculated how much intravenous fluids Inay is taking and how many urine output she will have for the evening. i asked Sheila to change her diaper at 5 am. when we opened the diaper, Inay was clean. so Sheila said we could give her a sponge bath to start the day fresh. as we were washing her, her fluids gushed forth and the whole bed was soaked. but i was amazed at how fast and tender Sheila’s response. Sheila’s feat was a performance, better than a chambermaid. i told ed that in hotels i marvelled at how they change bedsheets but in the hospital and a patient on top of the bed, the whole bedsheets change takes on a dance. imagine ripping wet beddings with a sleeping woman on top, coaching her to move her body so we could wipe and clean her plus dry the bed. everything that Sheila did, she did in ten minutes! and Inay was clean, fresh and smelling good in that ten minutes. that was something Ed nor I couldnt do with Inay. all the lifelong learning we got, this care giving competence is on top of my list.

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inay and the gift of dedicated work

Posted February 9, 2008 by marianita villariba
Categories: Babaylan, Spirituality

inay celebrated her 88th birthday this february 7 in a hospital, suffering from diabetic gangrene. inay is ed’s mother and has brought him and his sister irene with flying colors as a widow. as i reflected on her life, i realized that she is one of the most prolific mothers i know. her life is one of dedicated service, having been one of the first co-workers of the task force detainees TFD with sister mariani dimaraanan ( who has crossed over) during the martial law years. her development as an activist mother was long and arduous because ed was detained twice, first in 1974, then in 1982. she went to all the prison camps where ed was detained and brought food and drink to all the political prisoners. she even put up a piggery to support herself and help the families of political detainees support themselves while their breadwinners were in prison. i remember her carrying food and taking the bus, standing in the bus aisle because there was no seat and lugging all the food to camp bagong diwa in bicutan. inay did this for the first five years ed got arrested. but feeding the activists wasn’t the only thing she did while ed was in detention. she bought land in naujan from her savings as a cook and dressmaker, developed the farm and gave many families a livelihood. last year, during christmas, we went around the farm and noticed many families were awarded their own lot. i told ed that inay was very generous - she did not just give them a livelihood, she even gave them land, land she bought from her hard- earned money plus what her daughter irene saved from working abroad as a nurse and midwife.

for a woman who was widowed early ( ed’s father died in 1947), she had to raise two children and help support her eight siblings. inay worked her way to a mountain of public service. she never became a civil servant but did more than any mayor could do in naujan. she never rose to national fame like her son ed but accomplished what we all dreamed of - develop the local economy and sustain its community. we may dream of larger hopes, but inay sowed better seeds. we rushed to protest bigger injustices, while inay waited, listened and built stronger communities.

now that she has diabetes and cannot be mobile, i pray that her time on this life will be comfortable, that she will have the grace to remember us, and that she will receive the love of God she generously gave to many people. she has followed the lifetime growth law of adding life to our years.

we love you Inay. thank you for everything and may we be deserving of your time and attention.

healing light

2008-02-06T18:38:00.000-08:00

the healing light is a marvelous resource and it is within us. we can heal ourselves and others if we learn the skill of producing healing energy.the energy is light, photon light.

as i promised in my earlier blog, i will continue writing about the experiments that are published in lynne mctaggart’s book The Intention Experiment. she discussed in the chapter The Human Antenna that we have healers who can produce 190 volts and their intention can heal over long distances. she cites the experiments of Gary Schwartz, Elmer Green, William Tiller and Fritz Albert Popp who all found that healers heal because they emit electromagnetic frequencies and their thoughts travel through any distance. all the findings are well documented and for those who study further the chi, psi and living energy, she welcomes them to check her sources. she has several websites: for health www.wddty.com for the global experiments in healing www.theintentionexperiment.com.

google lynne mctaggart and join her Living the Field community.

what is the healer’s light ? how does the healer produce tremendous energy? lynne mctaggart shared the healing skill in metaphors and steps. i chose the piano metaphor. healing can be learned if we practice compassion and direct our intention, like learning to play the piano and producing beautiful music. but first, we need to be mindful. you can listen to a child playing the piano. she just plays and the sounds are not as lyrical. but when the child learns to play the notes she learns the melody. when the child touches the keys by dancing her fingers on the piano, you are amazed and delighted by such a skill. go to the YOUTUBE videos of Marc Yu and prodigies. they play with passion that is not common to children of their age. but their gift is also within us. we all have the energy to be amazing, we just need to free this energy and allow it to grow.

the second aspect of healing skills is a deep capacity for understanding people. you begin to use all your senses in knowing. you look at the person until you see the person in a light. you hear until you listen to her inner voice. you smell until you get her scent. you touch until you feel the electricity flowing. you scan until your spine receives her full kalooban. you know you areinside her when you begin to read her story - all these from your perceptual skills. the cognitive part of healing is what many professional doctors do - they use their mental skills well. but the healers’ skill is integrative and uses all senses. that is what i learned from doing what i do. lynne mctaggart’s list of research studies affirms it.

in the third blog, i will talk of projecting energy and how martial arts masters do it. we will discuss the tetada kalimasada practice. meanwhile, practice meditation until you get into the habit of mindfulness.

” A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘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.’ Albert Einstein

mindfulness and intention

would you like to power up your wishes? this week, i am reading the experiments published by lynne mctaggart in her book The Intention Experiment. many of the research findings on the science of intention resonated in my mind. ed brought this book in schipol and he found it so riveting. i found it very useful too.

i have a sikolohiyang filipino default when reading writers from the north. i studied the kalooban psyche of our people, i used to validate western psychology theories by doing experiments with students and friends. I found out that we have a Filipino psyche and that our attitudes have been shaped by our history as a people. the recent findings in neuropsychology and developmental psychology help me expand my lifelong learning menu. i am excited to share how to use the power of mindfulness and intention in our search for the mature pinoy life.but let me flash the conversations ed and i had yesterday with a new friend, bong.

bong practises tai chi and came home from the US to do his altruistic bit for the country. he gave us a set of lessons : ” judge not a person by his looks for hidden within him is a crouching tiger and a sleeping dragon.” ; “he who has no ambition succeeds”.

as we talked of what filipinos do to make our future greater than our past, bong continued with his tai chi lessons” he who never fails always succeeds,” and ” he who always succeeds is the most powerful.” we laughed as we exchanged quotes from lifetime growth laws. this is what we mean by the power of thoughts – listening, distilling the lessons of our lives and enjoying each other’s conversations.

now, what did lynne mctaggart found in the various mind experiments? our thoughts can affect our life. she explores the science of intention and shares the findings of various experiments. there are numerous evidences that prove our mind can change specific realities, including the state of our health and that of other people. she introduces the electromagnetic FIELD and how matter is affected by our mind. in her book, she goes through steps on how to power up one’s thoughts. i will reserve writing the powerful steps in another blog. let me just focus this blog on the inner self, images and context of mindfulness.

mindfulness starts with being aware of your own senses - your breath, your thoughts, your feelings. each activity - from opening your eyes to moving your head. i start with looking at the first light that comes, listening to the sound of waking up. I then pray and give thanks for receiving the present. i take each moment in full . why ? our bodies respond normally because our subconcious mind run it. but beware ,our bodily functions can go crazy and disobey our autonomous commands.

i remember my friend celia ‘s 96 year old mother. she is taken cared of by three nurses twenty four hours, from waking her up to cleaning her bowels. she is not comatose but has senile dementia and all her bodily functions, from eating to defecating has to be manually assisted. she does not know who she is nor who her family is. she wakes up like a doll and everything is done for her by the three nurses.

i also remember my friend madelyn who had advance lateral sclerosis where her bodily functions deteriorated each day but not her mind. in her final moments ,she could not even breath nor swallow her saliva but her mind was still hers.

so each moment that all your bodily functions are normal, be thankful. gently listen to your heart, pay attention to what is happening. when you eat, eat slowly and savour your each bite. appreciate what you pour into your body. power up your sense of smell and touch. enjoy the things you do when your are conscious. this is mindfulness 101. i will explore with you the second powerful step - intending one’s energy to get a goal manifested - in the next blog. be happy being alive.

ed in brazil

2008-01-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

ed is now in sao paulo after travelling last sunday, january 20. he did a tom hanks in schipol airport since he couldnt get a booking in the airport hotel. imagine ed longing for a warm bed and ending curled up in those slim benches. two days of travelling can wear you out and ed has to be ready with an 8 minute presentation on the state of education in the philippines. the global summit on education will be held in sao paulo where 20 million people live. sao paulo holds 900,000 events annually and with one of the largest immigrant population in the world, ed will have to compete to get his 8 minutes input loud and clear. how i wish i could be with him!

the whole summit on global education is interesting. visualize all the players in their best arguments for erasing ignorance and illiteracy by 2015. i cannot imagine all of our adult population as benefitting from such a summit but i can visualize a critical mass advocating subtantial reform on education. our children may not all be in schools by 2015 but at least the out of school youth (OSY) will have an equal chance of learning in the parallel learning system called ALS - alternative learning system. that is why ed flew for two days to get to brazil. he wants to convince educators and policymakers that Education for ALL is doable. All we have to do is learn and act on education as if our life depended on the millions of children and adults outside the formal schools. women make the majority of these adult learners and if our women get to learn more, we can be saved from imminent peril.

a heart prayer

2008-01-17T20:47:00.000-08:00

our heart should get the best of care. i visited the national geographic website and learned many things from its human heart video. as i watch the heart pump oxygen, i could feel my heart saying " see how much work i do for you. please look at all the million blood cells that i pour and circulate to keep you alive." amazing indeed. i read in one journal that if we were to locate God in our bodies, we will find God in the four chambers of our heart. the rhythm with which blood goes in and out of our chambers looks like God is at work.

i am 57 years old and hopefully is my heart's work record. i cannot thank God enough. whenever i listen to my heart ( i could hear it from my right ear), i realize how it feels to be with God every second. looking at the advance of medical science in treating our heart , from stents to artificial hearts, we should really go for healthy living. we do have healthy hearts and we can remain healthy if we know why and how. i think our hearts provide tangible proof of blessings we get from God.

now i will walk each day with God. perhaps do more running. i suggest to all to get hearts pumping so it can beat better. do pray and listen at our heart's thumps. what a heart!

happy hearts to all. we need not wait for valentine's day. may we all be heartfully alive. amen

make mandalas,make meaning

2008-01-15T21:25:00.000-08:00

mandala is a sanskrit word for sacred space or vehicle. i read in one political history book that mandala means a network in the old trading stories of pre-colonial filipinos. this was the pre-modern web! mandalas are good for meditation. as i was cutting paper to make mandalas for friends and family, i realized why i make mandalas. my significant discovery is ” mandalas carry stories”.

since 2003 , i made mandalas for friends who were ill and offered them for healing. i painted, cut paper and folded them into balangays or boats and peace cranes. i made mandalas for family as a form of prayer and the stories that flowed like tears. for special occasions like christmas, i would give them as lanterns and mobile arts. this year,every morning, i would look at them with the light streaming through and somehow i could feel a story coming for blogging.

friends have asked me how to make them. lea and hazel, two therapists, are opening their ginhawa house in kamias this march. i offered to help them learn how to make mandalas. they suggested i teach women with hivs and aids. i accepted the offer and will see how mandalas could provide healing stories.

while planning mandalas in my head, i brought out the Man’s Search For Meaning book of Viktor E. Frankl, a psychiatrist who started logotherapy . he survived three prisons in germany during the holocaust. rereading it made me think of what people say ” anything can happen to you. what matters is what you do with what happens.” i found women who have been violently abused take courage as their right to be. i have learned from men who have been tortured but have forgiven their torturers. both women and men have found meaning in moving and discovering a second chance at life to be good. Viktor Frankl said ” live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.” he stated that by acting and fulfilling a potential meaning, one’s life becomes worth living. i offer that to friends who feel their marriages have been burdened by troubles, to parents whose children defy them, to grandparents whose lives are in the final boarding phase.

i especially devote time to making mandalas for my parents ( cesar, nene and adang) because they have so much meaningful material in their lives. i keep telling ed that we should write about them, now that they are in their senior moments. nanay adang will be 88 this feb.7, nene will be 78 on april 4 and cesar will be 85 on nov.6. viktor frankl said that people like my parents have ” realities in the past - the potentialities that they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled,the values they have realized and nothing, and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past.” am emphasizing assets from the past - these are their granaries which we are proud to harvest from.

honor thy parents and ancestors. make our gratitude greater than our success ( quote from dan sullivan)

i hope mandalas bring you stories of meaningful lives.

loving in this life and beyond

2008-01-14T20:53:00.000-08:00

i tried painting unconditional love. unconditional love is one of my empowering themes for reflections. yesterday, i spent time at the garden to review my paintings if they described the experience of people crossing to another life. they looked flat, like children’s slash and paint. my painting of finding heaven looked like figures floating amidst faces. my spirit guide looked like a jester. when i painted it, i wanted to express some lightheartedness, some fun in crossing. i did not want the usual portrait of angels guiding someone to reach the waves of heaven. after all, if one is free of human burdens, one could be literally light?

i thought ” perhaps i am not allowing myself to immerse completely in what should just flow.” i approached ed the other day on how to paint with a perspective and he told me to use lines. lines are good except i do not have enough imagination to draw them, like the lines to a life beyond. ahh, perhaps i should do more research so i went to view all the savants in YouTube.

i found three interesting child prodigies, two are blind and one is a baby just playing with sounds on the piano. the first one is Derek Paravicini, who was born prematurely and had been given too much oxygen, he lost his sight and had learning disabilities. at 27 years, he is a walking sound expert and can translate all kinds of sound into music. he has been studied by neurologists and musicologists in the UK. they found him a real savant because he can play any music and can identify an incredible range of music within seconds. in fact they tested him in many situations, from identifying the sounds of a whole symphony playing in various keys simultaneously to getting the whole range of sounds in a train station. he can play the piano as a virtuosio , even pieces he has never heard before. upon hearing a difficult score, he can play the music on piano. but he is partly autistic and cannot communicate nor think logically. when they looked at his brain, they found it incredible and the theory is that, having been free of any distraction from visual and logical stimuli, his brain had developed an outstanding capacity for musical sound and his hands could translate them on the piano. and yet, he is incapable of taking care of himself and has to be cared for the rest of his life. he needs unconditional love.

the other prodigy is Yeh Eun, a five year old korean girl. she is blind and was adopted by the mother who brought her to the tv studio to compete . when she plays, her little hands and fingers try to cover all the piano to get the music right. she impressed many viewers and made them cry when she played and sang her piece. the koreans found Yeh Eun so inspiring that they gave her the highest score of 95. i would give her a 100 because of who she is despite her blindness and her being just 5 years old. unconditional love recipient.

the third is a 9 month old baby and his playing the piano just for laughs. it was a relief just to watch him play. yes, playing is the creative act. if babies do not play, they must be ill.

so going back to my paintings and the theme of unconditional love: is there really a life beyond what we know? can we ever have a glimpse of the people who cross? i wanted to know how painting unconditional love can help communicate with those who have another life beyond.

the answer came late yesterday. a friend i have not seen for years came to ask for help. she wanted to know how she could make her dead husband stop coming back. i listened to her talk. she had been losing sleep and had a sore throat. i asked her a few questions and suggested rehydration. i told her i would try meditating and she could do the same. i promised to get her better, but told her i cannot contact her husband. i was honest that communicating with those beyond this life is possible but i dont have reliable means. i can only imagine and pray that the other person from beyond would open up.

did her husband open up? i found my morning with lots of sense - sense that i translate into words. i sent the message to my friend who slept well into the night and just woke up to receive the message. we will know during the day if the message helped her.

so what is the connection to unconditional love? that is the message.

UP @100

2008-01-09T01:22:00.000-08:00

january 8 is the start of University of the Philippines ’s centennial celebration. my friend celia carlos and i went to diliman with her grandchild justine to celebrate. we were greeted by people wearing t-shirts with the slogan UP @100 ang Galing!

my family studied in UP. my father studied agriculture, major in genetics in UP Los Banos. my brother sonny, psychology; sister-in-law lynette, fine arts ; carmelo , fine arts ; ceres , premed; my niece, mara, fine arts. laraine, our daughter is in her first year of b.s. psych. all were busy with work and could not make it to the rites so i went out to UP plaza oblation as the sole representative of the villaribas.

i saw thousands of people in the plaza and felt good being in diliman community . celia and i scanned the crowd for familiar faces but we saw only a few- princess nemenzo, mercy fabros and tessie ang-see, so we joined them. then i caught old friends from the netherlands - carlo and maya butalid . carlo and maya had just celebrated their 50th birthdays and they still looked youthful. as we waited for the 100 torchbearers go around the plaza, we exchanged gifts and remembered our years in exile in europe . i told maya and carlo that our life in europe gave us many friends like the diliman commune. as the oldest torchbearer,100 year-old engineer fernando javier was making his way, i asked them if we would ever reach a hundred with our faculties intact. they laughed with their daughter and i told them” let’s hope so.”

remembering our teachers is a good way to spend the centennial of UP. by recalling from whom we learned well in our student years, we can distill part of the lessons of our generation. i was just 16 years old when i entered UP diliman, a year younger than laraine who enrolled when she turned 17 last year. i asked celia carlos whom she remembered as good teachers. we agreed that ofelia angangco and mercedes concepcion were at the top of our list. mercedes concepcion is the honored international sociologist-demographer. we both met her recently and was awed by her memory - she remembered our names. she is still handling classes and hasnt stopped working since the 1950’s . but what really inspired us was that she walked straight, looked at you with affection and then would say something you know that she knew who you are.

ofelia angangco was chair of the sociology department in the 60’s to 70’s . she is ebullient and gracious up the the present. there were many events that she organized for us and saw us through difficult years. student activism was on the rise then and she knew we went to anti-vietnam rallies. she wanted us to finish our degree and found creative ways to keep us in college when many of our friends were dropping out to serve the people. am especially grateful to her for allowing me to do artwork side by side with my formal major, sociology. she even offered to sponsor me in taking fine arts as a secondary degree but when i saw the bohemian students of fine arts, i declined and was just happy with my small circle of class 70.

the other teachers we remembered were miss mapa and miss rafols. both were colourful teachers. miss mapa was a mathematician and she taught us calculus. for every page in the blue book that we filled up, even if it was the wrong computation, we got credit. we realize how difficult calculus was but she was so kind and gentle, we just plowed through the equations and passed the course. if you ask me now what calculus is , i will tell you how miss mapa beamed and smiled when writing out 3’s as our grades. i could not have asked for anything else with such generous spirit. the other teacher, miss rafols was our teacher in euthenics. she had several rules in her class. we were not to wear perfume nor carry hankies. she said the perfumes were bad for us and that taking a simple bath daily was enough. now i dont remember why hankies were banned in her class. what was euthenics for? to become ladies with the right conduct. ms. rafols was murdered but ms. mapa passed on peacefully.

i still remember other teachers but will write in another blog . what i want to say in this centennial story is that being part of a hundred year-old institution is like a reward for social intelligence. i thank my parents for sending me to UP. UP gave me the people i learned adequately from . the friends i met in UP are the people i care about up to now e.g. family nemenzo who invited me to join them during the concert and fireworks. i saw amihan abueva who told us that she went back to UP to complete her degree in 2004. she was fulltime student organizer in the 70’s and did not graduate. when she came back from working overseas as coordinator for ECPAT ( advocacy against child trafficking), she found out that only one course was credited and she had to study again to finish a degree. i confessed to her that it was partly my group’s task in the martial law years to get UP scholars to serve the people full time. she replied ” yes, you all convinced us to drop out from college and go up the mountains.” but she wasnt resentful and understood that it was the challenge of the period.

when the 60 person wind orchestra played the overture,how i wish many could go to UP as scholars but that would be for another era. as the UP gymnast champions performed their winning numbers, i sent a prayer for all our youth to be as vigorous and fit for the coming challenges. finally, as the fireworks lighted up the skies and all the people were awed by such heavenly burst, i asked God to send us a hundred years of justice and peace. amen.

2008 delightful and dangerous lessons

2007-12-30T23:56:00.000-08:00

Our earth is at the edge of chaos and peril but is also poised to provide hope and joy in our lives. we are partly responsible for what may happen. our families must be prepared for danger. so i decided there are five lessons that will bring delight and danger.

but first, what gives me the power to decide the five dangerous and delightful life lessons? i love, believe, hope, act and reflect - these verbs empower me to do so.

first lesson : teach everyone to honor the fire element inside us and around us. fire is a change agent. burning as a chemical process has always fascinated me. as a child, i often looked for the matches that my mother used and i wanted to see what i could burn. i would lit a candle and create shadow plays under our house. our house never got burned with my experiments because i always had water ready for dousing the fire i built under the house. as i grew older, i saw that people would burn their establishments when business was bad in our town, lucena. there were many times when we would leave our house because the fire was swallowing our neighbourhood. one christmas time in the late 1950s, the delight in creating fire became a traumatic experience for me and my siblings. but i also learned to cope with disaster as more fires hit lucena.

when i became an adult, i discovered another fire - the fire in my belly. the fire in my belly brought me to act on national issues and i became an activist. honoring the fire element in my belly taught me many things . i met many people including my soulmate edicio. the fires in our bellies kept getting hotter, bringing both delight and danger to our lives. we learned how to nurture it and as it matured, our dreams came true.

the second lesson is knowing the water element in us. water brings life. water challenges us to live well. the first contact is the water within our mother’s womb. we become a human being by swimming inside our mother. i often wondered why people say “oh her water bag broke!” when my mother Nene was about to give birth. i understood it better when our fifth sibling jojie was born in our home. i saw my mother give birth and was i awed by her power! she gave birth to 13 children and that i cannot match. only my sister jojie inherited her fertility prowess, producing 11 babies.

the precious lesson that every woman carries is to have her baby swim in love. i gave laraine all the love while she was inside me. men have their sperms swim inside women but all of us take water from our mothers. no other human being can match the power of our mother’s womb. the secret mantra of all life’s joys is found in a woman’s pelvic temple and its springs. honor thy mother and thy spouse.

third lesson is the ability to fly. we dream, we inspire,we fly. children are the first to note this when they jump from the bed. we should spread our wings and let all our imagination soar. i remember the thrill of climbing a tree and jumping from a branch. as a girl, i wanted to go up the fiesta pole to get the prize money but only boys were allowed. besides they would grease the bamboo pole and made it difficult to climb to the top. so i dreamt of the skies and discovering new things. when i saw the movie ” around the world in 80 days”, i dreamt of flying around the world and i did! thanks to my husband edicio who brought me to rome in 1980 and started my globe flying life. i can never thank him enough for all the flying we do. what multiple delights i have when soaring with him..

fourth but nonetheless dangerous is the ability to unlearn what is not useful, what is harmful, what is irrelevant. on my list are habits that waste human lives and common resources. we buy things that demand energy and waste precious resources, examples are the luxurious cars that celebrities flaunt. but of all the human made items, the weapons that harm people is at the top. the weapons economy has been with us for many centuries and has monstrous impact, eg. wars raging in every era and culture. but for me, the attitude that wars are necessary and fighting in these wars is courageous is harmful. it can be unlearned. it is not too late to imbibe peace as the way to honor life and build the family of nations.

fifth but not the final lesson (all five are linked) is to swim like a fish, fly as a bird and learn to be both fish and bird. i credit my husband for this metaphor and many of his paintings dramatize this lesson. the story is simple : as birds fly in formation, they see where they can go and they fly in unison. they brave the currents and know what the seasons demand of them. birds do not waste time and energy. they live, they fly, they mate and worry not.as for the fish, they also live as schools and explore the deepest of oceans. fishes thrive in the most difficult of terrains but they also developed sophisticated biological radars for avoiding danger.

as a woman of this century i hope my daughter laraine will see the wisdom in being bird and fish. the bird provides a perspective that we share and the fish allows us to explore the breath and depth of living delightfully and dangerously.

My Prayers

i pray that laraine’s future will have fire, water and lots of flying. that she will learn for herself what it means to honor the fire and water in her life. to breath like the bird and the fish is poetry in motion.

i pray for minette and yeyi and for their love to be blest with many offsprings.

i pray and thank God for the lives of my parents, cesar, nene, adang; and all the love and support of my siblings starting with yen.

i pray for my friends and colleagues, from my zamora neigborhood to maryknoll, luzonian and UP and Ateneo. i pray for all the people in different countries and communities we worked with and lived with, including all those who crossed beyond.

i pray for all who need to realize their dreams in our lifetime. amen.

have a relaxing christmas 2007

2007-12-21T01:23:00.000-08:00

my gift to all - a relaxing pasko! its a winwin solution for people who want the holidays to be fun and relaxing.max your gift wisdom, not your credit cards.

first, sleep as long as you want. be happy. dont think of all the chores you need to finish. it’s just the end of the year, not the end of your life.

second, take a long shower and go through the day as if there is no urgent work. after all it is the start of the holidays. this is a season to be merry. when you feel relaxed, your brain, especially the right one gets a whole picture. once you feel good, list down all the gifts you want for yourself. then go shopping . if you want to craft your own gifts, proceed to the third step.

write all the thank you’s in little foto albums. get all the good fotos of your family, friends and colleagues, scan them and upload them on social networks. if you are into cut and paste, put all the fotos in multiply, facebook, ringo, all the free websites that accept fotos. make as many foto tags for all the gifts.

now if you are not web savvy, just go to the kitchen. have an inventory of all your favorite food. cook a dish and ask your friends to have lunch or have them pick up the dish. tell them your kitchen is now open for customers and free meals are available from 12 noon to 2 pm.

if you are not an excellent cook and people will not brave the traffic to rush to your house, then go your garden and pick your favorite plants. savour their presence and whisper all the wishes for each loving family and friend for the new year. prepare little cuttings, tie a red ribbon around these cuttings and label them with mini- fotos for family and friends. call each member and tell them to pick it and plant it in any garden and watch your wish for them grow the year round. if they do not plant it, the wish will fade. but no worry. your energy will embrace them because you gave the universe the list. it’s up to cosmic forces to know what’s up and what’s due.

please feed the senses. go to your wardrobe or aparador, get your fabulous clothes and accessories. wear the special dress you forgot has never been worn. wear this dress and an old perfume and go to the office. if there is a xmas party, have all the fotos with friends. you will remember being the prettiest in 2007. so many xmases have passed without even remembering how you look then.

now what to do with all the parents, parents in law (if you are married), siblings, godchildren who demand your generosity? just smile and make a five minute love slideshow. again, if you are not into digital productions, ask a friend or a niece or nephew to do it. pay her/him and compose a storyline. the slideshow should tell them how you see, hear and feel having them in your life. use a favorite song as background. burn enough copies and give them to all the families who have computers and dvds. upload it in YOUTUBE for the overseas members. in 5 minutes you will get the feedback you want from people who love you.

be happy. merry christmas. maligayang pasko.manigong bagong taon.

loving from life for life

2007-12-14T17:41:00.001-08:00

am now 57 moons and suns. ed and i spent the whole day learning and meeting friends, old and new. i feel blest and am grateful for all the luv i receive. here are two posters ed made for me with my mandala paintings and installations in elsinore, denmark. i feel this journey of 57 years have made me value myself, my love for ed, ayen, yeyi and minette and my original families. i thank my parents: nene ,iba and adang, and all my siblings 12 + 11 + yen, my second mother cheding, my paternal aunts luz, ara, neda, bella, theresing & thelma, my paternal uncle oca and the villariba clan of a hundred and fifty (more but am chunking them in fives). i pray for the people who have crossed beyond ( my grandparents villariba-collantes, my aunts and uncles, my friends and collegues) and offer peace cranes in their names. amen

delicious lucena feast

2007-12-14T17:20:00.000-08:00

come to my lucena birthday party. am 57 xmases and i feel great.. i have designed half of my party because my right brain is rising as host to this birthday feast. am inviting my families and friends from all over, from san francisco to new york, from scotland to singapore to come to my five-seven lucena birthday party. how shall i celebrate my party ?

as appetizers, i am serving gratitude pica pica to the people who made my five decades fun: my kindergarten playmates - mayette herrera-sunga, connie nava-tolentino, atet raya and charlie vicuna (who will have his feast in heaven); my luzonian high school chums - tita conde (bless her soul), nini enverga, evelyn lopez, nida quisao, fely jaspeo, sandra desembrana , maguyon; my UP diliman buddies - celia carlos & lyn erpelo; my ateneo soul sisters - delia unson, angel nagrampa and dolly tanseco-del rosario. my gratitude pica and pica will consists of sweet things we ate in lucena as children - snowball in watermelon bowls , cotton candy bouquets in hostia wafers, minukmok, budin and espasol wrapped in mam-in or mama leaves.

my 1950’s and 1960’s maryknoll and luzonian classmates will have steaming purple sinaludsod and pilipit dipped in hot chocolate. all these food will stimulate good memories.
while the appetizers disappear into waistlines, i will ask UP and ateneo friends to sip gumamela water with a hint of mango rhum. that will move people to talk and share stories.

after the apperitif, i will bring in my development friends to fill the rest of my 57 tables. they do occupy the three decades of my community work. am proud of five institutions i had nurtured from conception to maturity. these ngos are still operating in the social sectors : center for women's resources, gabriela, institute for popular democracy, education for life foundation, and isis international.

the first dish of chami with quail eggs and chitcharon on banana trunks will make its round. there will be five kinds of chami, using the various chinese lomi, bihon, egg noodles, buco noodles and sotanghon . five is a lucky number and whoever eats all five chami will get a dreamtrip to my favorite place in the philippines - siargao, surigao - the surfing, kayaking and spelunking island.

there will be seven seafood : pinais freshwater shrimps, sexy baliwis with garlic, oysters dressed in herbs and kesong puti, lips to lips scallops with ginger breath, walang hanggang dulong cakes, sugpong hilo sa lambanog and sili, and kiringkireng tinapa flakes on pako salad.

since am health conscious, i will serve lots of vegetables - laing and pinangat nursed in spicy coconut milk, okra and talong lovers’ delight, lumpiang burlesque and pickled pajo.

people want some lechon, so i will serve herbaboy , the only vegetarian pig which is a paradox’s delight and only two friends raise them ( emma alday in tiaong and angge & manny lahoz in zambales). surely, people will be happy digesting sizzling pig’s brain and genitals.

as for dessert, there will be a whole table laden with good news and laughter. am going to ask everyone to tell a story in any of five decades and sip lime and lambanog. maybe even chew betel so that people can relax. or smell tsampaca, my favorite flower.

i have prepared a list of people with whom to show gratitude and offer prayers for this lifelong celebration. the list includes all the teachers who gave me a window to the 20th century and a door to the 21st century. ever since i reached fifty, i celebrate my feast day each year with gratitude. that is a right-brain direction and i keep its energies flowing. my prayers take the form of mandalas and peace cranes.

the inspiring nationalist yuyitung heroes

2007-12-02T20:37:00.000-08:00

last nov.30, we honored Rizal Chang Keng Yuyitung and put his name on the wall of remembrance in bantayog ng mga bayani. now we have three Yuyitung heroes : Yu yi tung , the father and his sons, Quintin and Rizal. if the young generation only know CNN, our generation and those of our parents know CCN (Chinese Commercial News), the chinese newspaper that breathed press freedom in three eras, 1930’s, 1940’s up to the 1970’s.

it was great that his wife Veronica and whole clan attended the rites, some members coming from china, canada and the USA. there were children and the youngest was a two month old baby. the yuyitung’s struggle spanned many generations and their clan witnessed the birth, cruxifiction, death and resurrection of the pioneers, Yuyitung, Quintin and Rizal. Yu yitung was killed by the japanese for refusing to use CCN as their mouthpiece in 1942. Rizal and Quintin were persecuted, kidnapped and deported by the marcos regime for pursuing press freedom and standing up for the freedom of a free people. the two yuyitung brothers became models for journalists who fought marcos and his cronies. alejandro roces wrote : at this early stage, ” i nominate quintin and rizal as my candidates for the magsaysay journalism award.. and if those running the magsaysay foundation prefer to conserve dollars, or think that the yuyitungs do not deserve the award, then i suggest that we tie a ribbon around the magsaysay building and ship it back to rockefeller.”

as we look at the families gathered to honor Rizal, my friends chato basa, vicky segui, vim and pangging santos all remarked that our nation should know and honor the many chinese-filipinos who fought for freedom from the spanish era to the martial law years. we should share the story of how the yuyitungs and their CCN fought for press freedom; what the american, chinese and philippine governments did to the publisher and how it won the distinction of being the longest existing daily in the country. CCN was founded in 1919!

we encourage people to read the story in “Heroes of Press Freedom:The Father and Sons of Yuyitung “, by yvonne chua, PJR Reports, may 2007 ,published by the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility.

bantayog new heroes

on november 30, ed and i celebrated with a community four new heroes on the wall of remembrance in the bantayog ng mga bayani : aloysius baez, rizal yuyitung, nick solana, and lino brocka. every 30th of november, national heroes day, the members of bantayog remember and honor all the heroes and martyrs of martial law. as of this nov.30 we have 165 names. many of these women and men were our contemporaries and some died before they reached 30 years old. the youngest was nick lansang, 16 years old and the oldest was lorenzo tanada,91. the heroes came from all over the country but many came from luzon; most were intellectuals and excelled in academics, summa cum laudes and valedictorians; many died violent deaths; years after their abduction, their remains are still to be located; their perpetrators have never been punished; there are grassroots heroes; and a good number died as resistance fighters.

there are many names in the ‘waiting ‘list that tita thelma arceo has kept as chair of the documentation committee. ed and i gathered the names of the women in the waiting list and there were around 300 plus women. aida santos and i once remarked that whoever dies first , the living one will nominate those with whom we worked during and beyond martial law so that more women get on the wall.

to be honored on the wall, one has to qualify as having served the people during the martial law years 1971-1986; her/his family has to provide/ validate the experiences and the documentation; and a key informant may be requested to write about the nominees. since there are not enough documentation of people in and not on the waiting list, the people who are selected each year are few. we have called on many friends and organizations to help and nominate people so we could remember those who gave their lives to restore democracy.

how to nominate : items to consider and write about the hero

1.personal background;age,birthdate, birthplace, sex, civil status, religion,ethnicity

2.educational background;

3.political involvement; community work, community organization, etc.

4 circumstances and impact of death/disappearance; need not die during the martial law period;

5.names of those with whom the hero had worked with and if they can provide anecdotes of the hero; any article or unpublished/published stories during the martial law period.

ps. a friend asked us to nominate felicisimo patayan aka ka memong for next year. we are soliciting articles from friends and fotos to get ka memong remembered and honored.

helping graSSROOTS

2007-11-25T22:17:00.000-08:00

this blog is for friends and families who have many ideas on how to help the poor. our resources can be shared with many poor ( though i prefer to call them grassroots but surfing tags use ‘poor’ so let’s use it to reach out to many unpoor).

time for children of grassroots barangays is one service. last week, we hosted four barangays from caloocan in batanyog ng mga bayani. susan macabuag called me to assist her in hosting the children and their mothers. she asked me how to customize the museum tour and i wondered how we would explain martial law to children, ages 4 to 7. i asked ed what he could contribute and he replied with a song ” Meme na Bunso“. as we sang the song, i still found it a long shot to get the kids . how will i talk about the repression and resistance during martial law years? then i remembered my origami approach. so i made peace birds for the chidlren and the mothers ( around 40) and prayed that the visitors will learn something.

at 6.30 am thursday, nov.22, i got a call from susan that the bus was already in bantayog. “oh my God”, i had just risen from bed and so had to rush and get ready. clutching the birds and my origami set of paper , i told susan what we could do. we were greeted by 30 eager children and 30 mothers . there were four teachers and all have never been in bantayog. the mothers and teachers were born after 1972 and none experienced the tumultuous years of martial rule. i started the welcome rites with susan macabuag, fe mangahas, betty dela cruz and cathy of bantayog singing the national anthem. the kids sang with gusto. they all knew the song and that was a good start on nationalism. i started with a query on pets and the kids raised their hands. as the kids were telling what their pets were, i took out an orange craft paper and asked them its shape. “a square” replied the kids. i gave paper to the 4 teachers and told them to follow my folding exercises. then when they saw i made a bird, i shared the story of the peace crane offering of a girl stricken with cancer in hiroshima. i told them that the bird is Ibong Malaya and that all birds were born free. then i segueway into the importance of freedom and peace and healing our nation. i gave all the origami birds that i made. as the kids were playing with the peace birds, i crushed one bird with my right hand to introduce martial rule. with the crushed bird, i invited them to follow susan and fe upstairs for the film showing and the museum walk. at first, we were expecting that the video on People Power would bore the kids ( knowledge channel 20 minute- documentary). the kids kept playing around the theatre. as the film was nearing its end, we saw the mothers and teachers crying. then we brought them to the museum and the kids looked everywhere. the whole experience, from singing the national anthem to the film showing and museum walk, touched everyone, kids and mothers, pupils and teachers. finally we brought them to the wall of martyrs and heroes. they all thanked us and said they would bring more barangay members for the historical visit. that was a morning service we were happy with.

grassroots children learn fast and we owe it to them to teach our history so that they can make their future greater than our past.

migrants inside and outside hope

2007-11-22T19:15:00.001-08:00

for two days this november, charito basa, aurora de dios, mai anonuevo and i attended a scalabrini conference on transnational migration. dr. marla asis invited us and the conference became a beehive for meeting old friends and making new friends. we met the mexican delegates and listened to an impassioned discourse on mexican migration to North America. the mexicans have 30 million migrants in the US and Canada and are the highest remittance senders in the world. we met researchers from the academe, government and non government organizations.

what did we learn ? my insights here are based on mind mapping exercises while listening to many speakers. these are my own cerebral production, what edward de bono call ‘random word’ creative games. i open the discussion to provoke those who are working on development, governance and migration.

first,we know why our people migrate overseas with our two eyes : maldevelopment that results in poverty and the “bulemic ” governance and “anorexic ” institutions that fail collectively to provide a sustainable high standard of life for the majority of our people ;

second, to solve the poverty in our country and help encourage altruism among our politicians and leaders,we need to walk on two legs - develop industrialization strategies for local economies and increase the investment on education and health. the buzzwords in the conference is whether we manage well the mobility of the skilled and talented citizens in the market for higher pay and better working conditions. there was no debate in stopping the brain drain. the reform direction was to encourage the return of the talented and skilled migrants. but how do we get the professionals, especially scientists and entrepreneurs, to help ? ed says that we can do something wherever we are, whether we are inside and outside the country. ( thanking mila m, marita v, vhangie j, baby c, patrick l, pat c. and all our kababayan overseas ).

third, to answer the question above, we need to engage the local multi-stake holders in economic planning and investment. for those who want to help their birth city or town, there are many non-government organizations running social enterprises across the country. they have been successful in generating jobs for the poor : one is Altertrade in Negros and its muscovado sugar exports that help sacada workers rise from extreme hunger and become partners in the sugar trading sector; there is Atikha in San Pablo and Batangas which invests overseas remittances in coconut oil and coconut products and help migrant families earn from these products. there is Unlad Kabayan in Mindanao that invested in coconut decorticating machines to produce coconut husk-based products. there are initiatives in helping migrant families develop financial literacy and become entrepreneurs here and overseas.

fourth, invest in education for all (EFA) campaigns to get 11 million children learning by 2015 (MDG).we have around 20 million children in school and there are 11 million not in school. the solution is to install the alternative learning system (ALS) developed and tested by the Department of Education in all the towns and cities where the drop-out rate is high. the filipino civil society organizations, here and abroad, can be partners in this strategy and produce the 150 modules that are learner-centered.this program is cost effective. for 25 learners the cost is P70,000 and not dependent on more textbooks or more classrooms. the local government unit budget in education is rarely used in als. it is used to build classrooms or repair buildings. the basic alternative learning system can solve the high drop rate of our school age children ( at least half a million a year). the other solution is installing the adult accelerated learning system to get our farmers, fishers folks and indigenous communities learning functional skills that will enable them to rise above extreme poverty. these are the people who cannot migrate overseas because they have no tradeable skills.they cannot communicate nor negotiate for higher pay and better working conditions.

in the conference, the government is asking overseas filipinos to donate funds to build P200,000 per unit classroom . the EFA campaigners think we can better use the money in ALS and enroll 75 learners (P70,000 x 3 classes of 25 learners each) every school year. Ayala Foundation reported that they raise $4 million year from US Filipinos and Americans. if one million dollars (P43 million pesos) can be invested annually in ALS with the local government and civil society as counterpart partners, we can hope to return eleven million children in school. this can raise the standard of education for 42,000 barangays because the children will learn and the family will have hope. this is the promise of Education For All (young and old) advocacy. this is a solution for families who are inside and outside hope like the rural migrants who leave villages because of extreme poverty and cannot afford to become overseas Filipino workers (OFW).

finally, the investment in local industries will need more thinking and advocacy. we are convening a series of roundtable this month with the economists and development migration experts. we hope to provoke the altruistic members in the research and development circles. december is for honoring mary, joseph and jesus as migrants of hope. let us become the sheperds who join the holy couple. lets share the three gifts of good governance, compassionate citizenry and strategies for local industrialization to a nation in need of salvation.

helping the poor in lucena via learning services

2007-11-11T18:00:00.000-08:00

yesterday in lucena, my family held a medical mission as an offering for my father, cesar villariba’s 84th birthday. our family regularly have golden seeds’ day on birthdays to thank everyone for our health. since it was our father’s birthday,we decided we would have a healing day. around 300 women with children came and we organized ourselves along categories that needed attention : pediatrics, pulmonary, dermatology, geriatrics and general attention. since ceres romano, my sister, is a dermatologist,we decided we would group all the people along five rows based on the categories and get the more urgent cases attended at once. i volunteered to interview those mothers with babies. all the babies were feverish, had coughs and colds and they all looked like wilting blooms. as i scanned the babies, they did not even respond to my touch and i asked the mothers how long ago did their babies get sick. most said around a week and i asked them if they breastfed their babies. some do and some said they didnt. many of the mothers were laundrywomen and they have more than two young children aside from babies. they were also coughing and complained of dizziness. most of the children had skin allergies and were malnourished children. after interviewing fifty mothers, i turned to the grandmothers who were asking also for immediate attention. most wanted eye check-up and glasses but we had only 30 reading glasses and eye drop medicine so i wrote on their check up form to visit an eye doctor in the hospital for diagnostics. all the women wanted to talk and i listened to them briefly. i could not provide adequate counseling time since 300 people were already registered and ceres had to diagnosed what medicine she could provide. the best i could do was get all the women with eye problems in one corner and gave them a short talk on diet, to eat green and yellow vegetables like malunggay and oregano, squash and carrots which can help with their eyes and health. i also told them about resting their eyes and not to watch television for more than 3 hours, especially when they are tired in the evening. but how were they to entertain themselves after a long day’s work of washing dirty clothes? so i shifted my short medical advise to laughing at least five times during the day, and they smiled. the children began to gather around the women as i told them that laughter was a better way of healing themselves . of course they know that but i realized affirming it as a medicine gave them relief. as i finished getting most of the women, children and some men prepared for their consultation with ceres, i turned to a girl selling pineapple that my nieces told me. she had a swollen cheek and i asked ed to scan her (ed and i learned energy scanning i tetada kalimasada). ed wasnt prepared since we did not practice our jurus (exercises) that day so i asked the girl, her name is angel, about her cheek.

angel and her sister were abandoned by her mother and left under the care of her grandmother. when she was younger, her father was charged with rape and was imprisoned (although she did not know if he was convicted). that was in catanauan town and her mother migrated with the two girls to lucena. there she met another man who turned to be abusive. she left and the two girls had to fend for themselves. the younger girl, angel, became the object of torture. the stepfather would hit her when he was drunk. one day, he got a metal tube and stuck the tube in her mouth. angel was brought bleeding to the hospital and the stepfather was arrested. that was a year ago but angel still feels the pain in her left cheek and she cannot go out to sell food when it is hot or when it is cold. i decided to take angel and her sister and cousin to lunch at home with us.

i found many resilient traits in angel, nine years old and her sister, angelica,ten years old. both of them sell food to help their grandmother feed seven other grandchildren plus take care of a sick son. they both want to go to school but they have not been registered (their mother did not register them when they were born) and their grandmother has her hands full trying to care for a big family, so no one had arrange to enroll them. earlier i had written a request for them to find the barangay captain for late registration but i realized that they could not write nor read. when they came to lunch with me, i asked my elder brother sonny to talk with them. sonny asked them about their life and after lunch, he asked them to bring a relative so we would arrange for their education. i gave them towels and soap, underwear and a school bag. we met with an aunt whom i had diagnosed earlier in the clinic as having reproductive health problems. i introduced our family as a family of teachers and that we would organize them as a learning group for the alternative learning system (ALS). i also brought in mercy, our laundrywoman who is a migrant from leyte but who lives in the same urban poor area. she agreed to be a learning group coordinator, a kaagapay ( more blogs about our education for life ALS program from http:// edicio.wordpress.com ). we suggested that we would start with writing and reading lessons and we showed them books that ning encarnacion gave us. we gave mercy the task of being their librarian. angel’s eyes twinkled and the three girls and their aunt promised to attend our learning sessions. i told them we would arrange for at least an hour a day,twice week for preparatory classes in their area. with that offering, we bid them goodbye since we were returning to quezon city that day.

on the way home to quezon city, my mind was full of questions. i wondered how i could organize angel’s learning, knowing her trauma and the many emotional issues she has to resolve. but having seen and listened to her, she is a girl who will not surrender to despair nor be defeated by extreme neglect. she was always smiling even when narrating her horrible experiences. there is that determined twinkle in her eyes and she laughs with gusto when given a pen and paper to write. she also has the love of her elder sister, angelica, who buys the pineapples and peels them for selling. i asked the two girls how they learned to count and give change ( which will be another lesson in pedagogy) and their stories made me think that children like angel and angelica have multiple intelligences. they survive poverty and make a living. they deserve a better future.

Dead People Can Communicate

2007-11-03T01:59:00.000-07:00

Dead People Can Communicate

Communicating beyond this life is a real topic during wakes, in cemeteries and on Halloween. The other morning I saw a classmate Tony Perez in ANC talk as a resource person. I listened to him explain what happens to people who die. I decided I would blog about my experiences, too. I have many experiences in sensing the dead, sometimes I hear them, sometimes I see them, but most of the time they talk to me in virtual reality- inside my head. I am a psychologist and I started reviewing the episodes where I encountered dead people communicating. The earliest I could remember was when I was six years old and my mother was rushed to the hospital late in the evening. The woman who came to keep me company was my grandmother but I did not know her then .All I could sense was that she was not alive since I never met her and she was floating in air. She told me to pray for my mother and when I finished praying, she faded. After that episode, I prayed a lot and she never appeared. That was fifty-one years ago but the incidents with the dead continued.

Recently I had been interviewing a migrant in Lucena as part of the research on migration. She is a Chinese-Filipino Muslim from Mindanao and I wanted her to share her journey. We will call her Ava. Ava told me many stories and one of them had to do with her sister who was murdered by her husband . I asked her how she found out who murdered her. Ava was watching over her sister’s body when her fone received a text. It was from an old sim card that she had thrown away and was surprised to see the message that her sister was murdered. Ava showed her fone to another sister and the message was sent by an aunt. They called the aunt who denied sending any message. But the messages kept coming and so they texted the source what it wanted. The texter replied and it was the sister who died. Ava and her sister were horrified. They could not believe that their dead sister would point to her husband as the murderer. She asked Ava to take care of her child. Ava then went to the husband and showed him the messages. He denied the charges and accused Ava of fomenting trouble while there was grief in the family. Since sms are not acceptable proofs in court, especially from the dead, Ava could not file charges in court. Up to this day, Ava is praying and hoping her sister will get justice. Ava had a last message from her sister,'Jesus is alive and is caring for me." (Note that Ava and her family are Muslims.)

This episode is not the only one I heard. A good friend of mine, another psychologist, wanted help in solving the twin murders in her husband’s family. She and I decided a process of discernment where I would meditate on what I can gather. I requested for prayers in my name. I decided that the less I knew , the better for me. After a week of meditation and prayers, I sent an email message to my friend. I told her to validate what I gathered and the results sent shivers to her and her husband. It was the danger they knew all along and they wanted a face-to-face meeting. Since I discovered the danger, I cautioned them to take care of themselves and that I would see only one member of the murdered family. It was a long discussion on justice, on family closure and on love. I was honest with the family – that I could only describe what I saw but that I could not solve the murders nor be a witness in court since I cannot prove being a real witness. The one true help I gave is my faith on divine justice, that there is a meta record of all the injustices and my belief in God’s court.

So if there is divine justice and there is a meta record, how does one access it? First, we will have to learn to communicate with God and the people who crossed beyond. That is both difficult and simple. People want justice in this life. In fact the origins of education in ancient Greece is the search for justice. So how do we weave human and divine education to get justice ? my answer – lifelong loving,remembering and learning. prepare your messages and get ready for their replies. Happy souls' day.

everything we should know

2007-10-24T19:43:00.000-07:00

Of all the books in the universe, there is one book I recommend to all now, especially to those who want to live a fairly long and great life – A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson UK 2003

Why ? Because of the following:

That Europeans came from the founding population of seven women – the so-called daughters of Eve during the Palaeolithic Era ( Bryan Skyes, The Seven Daughters of Eve, Oxford 2002 ) whose names are Ursula, Xenia, Jasmine…. (Where id the seven women come from ? of course Asia).
That our total number of forebears – parents of parents of parents – thirty generations ago is over one billion ( 1,073,741,824 to be precise) .
We belong to one species since genetic findings say 99.9% of our genes are the same except 0.1 %called the SNIP - a single nucleotide polymorphism that makes a difference.

4 .We are not the center of our universe but that our DNA, if it were woven into a single strand, would stretch from the Earth to the Moon ( 20 million kilometers of DNA) and return again and again.

5 That we have enough bio-electrical energy in our cells, around 20 million volts per meter, which is equivalent to that of the charges that a thunderstorm carries.

6. That our human activities are leading to 600 extinctions per week, an underestimation of our capacity to destroy everything that took millions of years to grow and develop

How?

First proposition : We, __________state your name have the same seven female ancestors . Since we are related to all, we can transform political discourse into a family agenda and prioritize policies that will be for the good of all. We will gather leader-cousins and bring them to the Suhotan coves in Mindanao. The co-moderators will be the lumads who understand what it means to lose your children to the wars of aggression and plunder. The co-facilitators will be the migrant women and men who know what it means to be displaced by globalization and leave one’s birthplace and children to earn a living. Let us begin by having peace dialogues and ending all oppression. Power to truth and justice!

Second proposition : Since our DNA is 99.9% the same, let us secure the SNIP gene that produces unconditional love for peace and justice and propagate it to all. This SNIP may be the amazing gene in Dalai Lama generations. This SNIP can go into six billion genes and if we swap the debt for SNIP gene resources, then our success rate with the coming generations will be phenomenal. We will have more Martin Luther Kings, Mahatma Gandhis, Maria Montessoris, and Mother Theresas instead.

We will have a violence-free planet.Peace will reign in Gaza, Sudan,Congo ,Peru, Cuba and Basilan.
We will stop all the extermination of billions of animals, plants and the scarce elements in our universe.
We will free our eagles, tarsiers, turtles, sinarapan fishes, and myna birds from us. In turn,we will be saving ourselves from extinction!

Third proposition : let us use our individual 20 million volts of bio-electricity in our bodies to live a sustainable life. Less worries about gasoline prices rocketing to Mars. Less pollution. No more E-VAT since our breathing cannot be processed and packaged as a commodity. We can walk and bike to all the islands and mountains by using our chi energies. How this can be done, check out the practitioners of Indonesian Penkat silat, Kung fu,Tai chi,Yoga, Kalimasada Tetada,other Eastern disciplines and the Nordic forest walk .

The free promotion via embracing energy cultivation will mark our generation’s legacy. We breath, we move, we heal. We breathe , therefore we are.

PLACE YOUR DNA SIGNATURE:

emotional banking

2007-10-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

Ed and I were talking of emotional banking that Stephen Covey wrote about in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I told Ed that whenever I did something for him, I never really thought of creating a love account but now that the notion of emotional banking has been raised, I got to think of the many things women do for love. Ed brought Covey’s book and found his definition . An Emotional Bank Account is a metaphor that describes the amount of trust that’s been built up in a relationship. Covey suggested six major deposits : 1) understanding the individual ;2) attending to the little things; 3) keeping commitments ; 4) clarifying expectations ;5) showing personal integrity; and apologizing sincerely when making a withdrawal. These deposits are good guidelines for couples who want to build better relationships and I told Ed that we should blog about emotional banking.

Now that we are in the subject of developing better relationships, I often think of how men and women build on the respect and love they have when they start a relationship. For many couples I know, I have an impression that their love is based on a deep sense of personal integrity – the capacity to tell the truth and being loyal to those who are not present. I know women who trust their husbands are faithful because they experience honesty and loyalty in their daily family life. I know Ed has integrity and we trust each other whenever we are apart. This integrity is the biggest capital account in our book.

The rest of the major deposits are like time deposits and we can make withdrawals without fear of being overdraft. But I wonder how men cope with emotional overdrafts when their partners are no longer able to keep the accounts. Women learn to live with bankrupt love .Women I know move on and build separate lives. Men I know, male friends, look for new partners who can provide bigger emotional accounts and the pattern take new victims.

Just this morning, my brother brought a pamphlet with the title : Sustainable Masculinity, A Self-Help Toolkit for Men. The author, Pip Cornall,talkes about reclaiming integrity and mess cleaning. It got me interested and so I read on. The author shares his experience with handling domestic violence and conflict. He himself was a survivor of paternal violence and he victimized his own wife. He went into self-healing and then started to work on a paradigm where violence and pain could be eradicated, where men could become real men and women could trust men who go for positive change. Cornall cites the findings on emotional intelligence and has develop a toolkit for men with his partner Grace Gawler. ( I decided to postpone writing about the toolkit until I study their methods further but their ideas are sound).

how to make one's work count

2007-10-16T02:22:00.000-07:00

yesterday i was reviewing my bio data and realized that i have only stated the paid work and the community work i did for the women’s movements. then i reviewed my work in three decades (70’s to 2000’s) and came up with a portfolio for women who want a bigger future. this is exciting, i told myself, i will learn and re-invent myself and see if i can follow the life of elizabeth handy, charles handy’s partner and manager (our favorite management guru). elizabeth and handy have decided that they would organise their lifework into four areas : paid work ( getting fees or salaries), study work (acquiring new skills and knowledge ), gift work ( community/public service) and homework, caring for loved ones and the home. each would take turns earning and would assist each other to pursue self-improvement. both are in their senior years now but have very interesting lives. elizabeth is a portrait artist and manager of charles. charles is still the business management analyst ( he says most business schools teach business analysis and not management) one third of the year, then he becomes elizabeth’s assistant several months of the year .

ed and i want a similar arrangement, except that i have not been doing paid work now for five years while ed does a lot of paid work as ” knowledge manager-educator”. but let me get to the lesson of a portfolio life. charles handy discussed this portfolio life concept in the Future of Work, way back in the late 70’s and he coined the term “house husband”, suggesting that it would catch on and men can be good at it. the world does change slowly but now there are many house husbands and they are enjoying it (all those married women working overseas sending remittances to their husbands come to mind.) the concept of a portfolio is part of the various lives we have in this world. we are not only wage workers, eg. cooks or dressmakers. we are also mothers, church coordinators, school events coordinators, community health workers, citizens, artists and i can think of a hundred things that women do from plumbing, electronics repair to blogging lessons to digital friends. all women work even if they do not get the usual wage or renumeration.

so let me go to making a portfolio for women of my age ( am going 57 summers). the younger women can create their own when they need it. each decade, according to howard gardner of multiple intelligences, is enough time to become an expert if one has both developed a theory and a method and can produce some evidence with the help of regular assessment of lessons. i believe one’s expertise becomes a discipline worthy of the recognition that universities bestow on their faculty. i have been a teacher in the formal setting, eg. ateneo,miriam & enverga universities, from 1970 to 1984. then i went to do community work, from research to training women become aware of their potential, claim their rights and exercise leadership. that’s three decades work (1974 -2007) and i offer as evidence many delegations, organizations, groups, institutes, schools and families ( that’s the most organic organization) that have women and girls plus some men and gay men whom i helped know who they are and what empowering roles they play in this life. i lay claim to working across borders and generations, wearing multicultural shoes.

ahh but what will i cite as agenda for the study work if most of my paidwork, giftwork and homework are with women and feminists ? the sciences have always beckoned to me but i only got as far as social psychology. i told ed that if he earns more money as a short-term overseas portfolio worker, i want to be a neuroscientist. i want to see how the mind works and how social relationship can benefit from understanding the paradox of our mind (inside and outside our brains). this will be a future greater than my past. hoping for a colorful entry in my resume, i have started writing my experiences with crossing, here and beyond , experiences that lead me to think of an afterlife more. of course i do believe in God and i do practice my Christian beliefs with some influence from Buddhist philosophies.

but why do i want to be a neuroscientist ? last week while i was listening to sandra torrijos what she needs to do for her mother’s funeral rites, i thought how good it would be to create loving rites with families in grief. i do know that there are various ways of preparing for death, dealing with grief, mourning and closure handed down to us by our ancestors but we never thought of it as part of our creative life. somehow, we just go about it as we thought it should be since we operate along ” respecting the tradition”. but the more i reflect on grief, love and closure, the more i want to take both the hands of science and art in organizing how we think and act when death comes. is this the topic for a woman’s resume ? yes and very much part of lifelong learning since death is the only certainty we have. we may not know when our time will come but we know it will surely come. so i want to weave my life not around death but wear a garland as a certain attitude that death is a glorious way for saying it is all worth it! the it is LOVE and not death. yes, one’s resume should be on all the love, love for and from people, love of work, love for service, love of learning, love for writing, love for blogging. lots of it. ed and i make each loving moment grow till it becomes part of the people who love us too. Amen.

how to become perfect parents /lovers

2007-10-07T23:00:00.000-07:00

today ayen was ecstatic because she passed the UPCAT and told us “i am not a bum anymore”. we all hugged and said thanks to God. of course, passing the UPCAT is an achievement for our clan since i, sonny, melo and ceres didnt have to take it to get into UP (in the 60’s all you need is proof that you are in the top ten of your high school grad class and that your IQ tests from the NCEE was good enough for the state university). the rest of our siblings and their children took it in the 80’s, 90’s & 2000’s but didnt get to the privileged percentile. so ayen is our first clan UPCAT diliman passer. we told ayen to aim for a scholarship so she can make her time in school shine. she replied “that’s tough”.

i have been thinking of parenting as a science. charles handy wrote that parenting is something you do without the formal education. i agree but i also think we can prepare people to become good parents. ed bought a book recently and it’s a good book with insights on the perfect parent - FREAKomonics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, penguin books, 2006. there is a chapter on the study of children and the things that make a child do better in school. the interesting thing is that there are many things we do as parent for our children do do good in school, like having many books at home, bringing our children to museums, etc. in the late 1990s, the US department of education did a longitudinal study called Early Childhood Longitudinal Study or ECLS to measure the academic progress of 20,000 children from kindergarten to 5th grade and the subjects were from a cross section of American school children. they found 8 factors that are strongly correlated with text scores: 1) the child has educated parents; 2)the child parents have high socioeconomic status;3) the child’s mother was 30 or older at the time of her first child’s birth; 4) the child has low birthweight ;5) the child’s parents speak English in the home ;6) the child is adopted ;7) the child’s parents are involved in the PTA;8 ) the child has many books in his home. then there are 8 factors that are not correlated ( but i wont write about them here, will do that in another blog sometime). i wonder if these 8 factors also have a bearing on raising teenagers to become good parents and better lovers. is there a longitudinal study of teenagers (16 to 25 years) and what factors have a bearing in their formation as future parents and lovers? those who blog and scan, please inform us.

there is another chapter on parenting and it’s the legalization of abortion and its correlation with crime reduction in the US. steven levitt studied the number of abortions and crimes that followed roe versus wade (when abortion became legal) and led him to conclude that ” when the government gives a woman the opportunity to make her own decision about abortion, she generally does a good job of figuring out if she is in a position to raise the baby well and if she decides she cant, then she chooses the abortion.” when levitt examined the US annual number of abortions and computed a value for the aborted fetuses, he came up with a figure of 15,000 lives which is equivalent to the annual homicide data. ergo, he says there is a link between abortion and crime. many responded/reacted to this conclusion and levitt is still under siege from the conservative right. but the feminists and reproductive rights groups will benefit from examining his propositions and how he looks at the hidden side of everything.

there other studies that levitt and dubner discussed in the book which parents should read like why parents should think before naming their children ” winner” and ‘loser”. as i was reading Freakonomics in bed with ed (who was reading Electric Universe) , i told ed that our long conversations have also long quiet time for reading. same bed, different books make for a satisfying time in bed. that’s part of being perfect lovers.

knowing what you dont know

2007-10-07T22:56:00.000-07:00

charles handy, our favorite BBC guy, said that finding out that you know what you think you didnt know is not trivial. i agree with him because this week, there were so many things i wanted to learn about, thinking i do not know many things.

first, i dont know how a city can grow in three hundred years since i am only half century old. whenever i go home to lucena, i visit the street where i grew up - zamora street. i see a few familiar houses but there is so much change that i feel i do not belong to the neighborhood anymore. when caloy, my brother told me about the longest street - quezon avenue,i invited him and maxine, his daughter to take a ride and see how long it is. what a pleasant surprise when we started from cotta, one of the oldest ports in quezon province and where a lot of boats used to unload fishes and products from masbate, romblom and other southern tagalog islands. caloy told me that many migrants enter lucena from cotta and dalahican ports but the building where we were standing used to be the garrison used by both spaniards, american and japanese authorities. after talking with the men at the port, i realized that i did not get any local history instruction when i was at the university. caloy told me that we could go as far as tayabas but i wanted to learn more about the life and the people along quezon street ( since i remember my classmates in maryknoll grade school and luzonian high came from cotta). as we reached the train station, i suddenly got nostalgic because our family used the trains to travel to naga during vacation and to manila for special visits. caloy showed me the retired trains with hondagua signs and the former station building that has occupants. he said that hondagua in the early 1930s was a popular destination but i dont even know where it is. all i can see is the rust and the derelict station and rails. i told caloy that in europe, the trains are super slick and the terminals are fabulous, like the rome termini or the paris du nord. i felt sad that we do not have the mass transportation that our people travel when they go overseas. i think that our migrants in europe are lucky because they get to ride the Eurostar and the london-paris express. oh i have so many good memories traveling on trains across europe. ayen used to sleep on train tables when ed and i commuted in the netherlands in the early 90s.

going back to finding out what i dont know but somehow i know - i went to visit sandra torrijos and pray with her since her mother died. we had a long talk on how we care for our mothers when they get ill and what we can do when a parent dies, or cross over to another state. sandra did everything she could to take care for her mother who was diagnosed with leukemia last year. when the final end came, sandra was wondering if her best efforts to ease the pain her mother had was enough for a peaceful crossing. i told her love never fails in helping a person to cross over peacefully. as she described all the things she did for her mother, a slight electric wave went up my spine and somehow i felt a pleasant message. only when i was introduced to sandra’s aunt beth did i learn more about sandra’s mother whose name is sol. then i knew that tita beth knew that all is well. sol torrijos is well on her way to a lovely celestial journey. it is like taking the luxury car of Eurostar and having friends and family accompany you. it is like dining in the best restaurants while the train passes through panoramic valleys. it is like being served the appetizers that wet your appetite. oh, crossing over is simply delightful. if you ask me how i know, then please pray for the safe and joyful arrival of people you know who have just crossed over… then you may know what you think you didnt know… a paradox…

lucena 1929

2007-09-13T08:27:00.000-07:00

this week i borrowed an old telephone directory of quezon province. it had interesting items and i spent reading it page after page. the directory is so different from what we have now. it starts with the profiles of towns and it is similar to a census. all the citizens who have official posts, who have properties worth 5000 pesos, who are working as professionals,etc. are enumerated. i tried to find our relatives' names but since they were simple folks, the directory did not carry familiar names.

the school fund for 1925 in lucena was reported as P41,679.47 with 17 barrios and a population of 12,108 (males 6357,females5751). i went on to read how many women professionals were listed and found many male professionals, a few women midwives and teachers but only one woman doctor and one woman lawyer. women found it difficult then to go to higher studies, much less practice their profession.

other than the names, what i found worth reading was the direction in traveling from manila to lucena and onward to gumaca. there was no map, just directions on what to see, what to watch out for and what to do. the assumption of the direction is that the traveler has enough time and a good sense of direction. it instructs the traveler as if he may be driving his own car and just wants to see places in a most relaxing way. for example, upon reaching los banos after the long ride from manila passing 12 towns and watching all kinds of scenery from pasay to calamba laguna , the traveler is invited to walk towards the Los Banos Falls and then proceed to the Agriculture College. there are all sorts of travel tips for laguna but upon arriving in quezon, the tone of the instruction changes ,eg. " the road to tayabas is first class but the road to lucena is all down grade ". there is a constant warning for water not for the driver to drink but for the radiator to be full of water! the instructions never say anything about how much time it takes to get to lucena and is very generous with adjectives to places which may be dear to the writer's heart. can you imagine being on a business trip in 1929 and use these instructions ?

Loving People, even when they dont love back

2007-08-31T20:09:00.000-07:00

today i while reading ed's blogs, i remember lotta sylwander, a swedish friend. i just got an email from her in africa and told her i would blog as a response. hope she can still use her tagalog.

ed translated kent keith's 10 paradoxical commandments in tagalog and i want to share them with lotta,pat and friends who keep loving even when disappointed/hurt by their loved one. this is also a way of encouraging lotta, pat and all my women friends to build their dreams into programs that make loving a movement.
Sige pa rin.

Kahit mahirap ispelingin

Karamihang tao ay mahirap ispelingin at sarili lang ang pansin
Sige, mahalin mo pa rin.

Kung may mabuti kang magawa, pupupugin ka ng intriga
Sige, gawin mo pa rin.

Kasunod ng tagumpay ay mga plastik na kaibigan at seryosong kaaway
Sige, magtagumpay ka pa rin

Anumang gawin mo ngayong kabutihan, bukas ay malilimutan
Sige, gawin mo pa rin.

Ang taong totoo at tapat, ay malimit mapahamak
Sige, magpakatotoo ka pa rin.

Ang malawak at malalim mag-isip at mangarap ay kayang bakbakin ng mga makitid at mababaw
Sige, largahan mo pa rin.

Panig ang marami sa maliliit at dehado, pero ang susundan nila ay ang malaki at llamado
Sige, laban pa rin.

Ang pinaghirapang itayo nang matagal ay pwedeng ibagsak nang biglaan
Sige, itayo mo pa rin.

Ang kailangan ng tulong, naiilang sa handang tumulong
Sige, tumulong ka pa rin.

Ibuhos mo sa mundo ang kaya mong lubos at ang matatanggap mo ay maraming hambalos
Sige, lubusin mo pa rin.

FOR LOVERS

2007-08-21T18:45:00.000-07:00

For Lovers Who Want to Keep their Love Aflame

Marriage is a long conversation. Nietsche

For those who want to keep
love aflame, come and take this journey.
Close your earthly eyes and let your breath embrace your lover .

Let Pablo Neruda whisper softly the lines to carry you both

(say them gently to each other) :

“And now you are mine

Rest with your dream in my dream

Love and pain and work should all sleep now

The night turns on its invisible wheels and you are pure

Beside me as a sleeping amber

No one else, love, will sleep in my dreams

You will go, we will go together

Over the waters of time.

No one else will travel through the shadows with me,

Only you evergreen, ever sun, ever moon.”

As you drift gently together into ever dreamland,

let me guide you to a cove with a stream of loving images:

as a baby, being kissed by your mother,

as a child running towards your father’s hug,

as a pupil being greeted by your teacher,

as a playmate catching a ball from your best friend,

as a child opening birthday presents ,

Become aware to the aliveness of things,

Smell the food Nanay is serving,

Taste the soup Lola is cooking,

Lick the icing on the cake that Tatay is eating,

Drink the juice that Ate is making ,

And project yourself effortlessly into all these family joys.

Go back to the present and as you caress your lover

say these lines of Neruda :

“Your hands have already opened their delicate fists

And let the soft drifting signs drop away

Your eyes closed like two gray wings

and I move after following the folding water

you carry that carries me away

The night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny

Without you, I am your dream

only that and that is all.” Sonnet LXXXI (translated in English by Stephen Tapscott)

Each day make this journey with various images .This journey is almost a moment in heaven,

enabling you to keep your lover’s fire aflame.

ayen is seventeen

2007-08-21T18:36:00.000-07:00

Ed and I blogging about AYEN turning seventeen.

Ed : Our daughter Ayen turned seventeen on august 20. I told her that I might write about her in my blog. She just smiled. Am not sure if she thinks it’s a good idea. My mind travels back seventeen years to a hospital in Utrecht. There I had my first glimpse of Ayen as her dark crown of hair popped out of her mother at the delivery room. Seeing the rest of her, I blurted to Girlie “She’s a girl!”

Girlie : Ayen was a fast baby. I remember seventeen years ago in Utrecht that I was all prepared for her birthing. Early in the morning, I took my bath, got my bag and woke up Ed to go to the hospital. The nurse who received us told us to go to the labor room and wait for the doctor. I told her I was ready and to page the doctor. She did not believe me since it was my first baby and she had assisted many mothers go through labor. But since I could already feel my waterbag about to burst, I told her to get the doctor examine me. Lo and behold, the doctor said I was fully dilated and any moment, my baby will come. Ayen came with three exhalations and the doctor said: That’s the fastest delivery I ever did!

Ed :Now she’s a high school graduate, preparing to enter college, at seventeen.
The Beatles somehow intrude, “When I was just seventeen…”

Girlie: Yes, Ayen is blossoming into a woman, pretty and smart.

Ed : Yeah, what was I at seventeen? Where was I? I quickly calculate the years. Must be 1960, at Christ the King Seminary in Quezon City. A novice being inducted into religious life.

The one-year novitiate comes after two years of college studies. It starts with putting on the cassock, and ends with the ceremony of taking temporary vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the Society of the Divine Word.

We would renew those temporary vows for the next six years, before committing to perpetual vows. And also do the two remaining years of philosophy, get a master’s degree, serve a one year regency (I spent mine teaching in Abra) and four years of theology.

Ayen must have been three or four years old when she took to answering the phone. One morning she rushed to answer a call, looked puzzled, and asked me: “Who is this Father Ed?” That was the first time her mother and I talked to her about my life as a priest. Hard to say how much her young mind understood then.

Or later, when she learned about my having been in prison, twice. Or taking part in the resistance movement.

A few months ago, she was told by a former classmate about a movie they discussed in class - Ora Pro Nobis, directed by Lino Brocka. “It’s about your father,” she was told.
She was thrilled, and curious. I told her that I heard Pete Lacaba who wrote the script say that the lead character is partly based on my life story and the choices I faced after getting out of prison in 1986.
She asked, “Am I also in the film?” Sorry, I told her, but she came into my life only after some years of informal exile in Europe.

When I was just seventeen, who could have known or even imagined the life that I would have, and the choices I would make?

The high point of novitiate was a 30-day retreat, patterned after the Jesuit Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. One key meditation session was on the “Two Standards” which challenged us young novices to make our life choice. I remember praying afterwards and finding comfort in the fact that our novice master was a former soldier who served with the German army on the Russian front.

Looking back, I realize how malleable I was then, and yet by choice. Years later, I told classmates in philosophy that I chose to suspend my critical thinking for most of the noviciate, since I knew nothing about religious life and trusted that the novice master knew. “Novice masters deserve the highest places in heaven or the deepest places in hell,” I said. They exercise such decisive influence on our formation.

Girlie : I had a different formation. My parents wanted me to become a Carmelite nun but the idea of a lifetime of silence was not in my imagined future. I wanted to dance and become a ballerina. I went to all the movies and thought of becoming Audrey Hepburn, be an incognito princess in Rome and have romance. When I turned seventeen I was wearing mini skirts, going to debut parties in Roxas blvd with my Maryknoll classmates and going shopping in Escolta. I had fun and danced the twist and rock and roll.

At seventeen, Ayen has had many teachers in school and out of school. She has made some choices. Many more await her. Can she expect to be clearer about her future now than I was at seventeen? Probably not. There is greater complexity and uncertainty, and changes are faster.

Girlie and I tell her that we will do our best to give her a chance at as good an education as we can afford. But of course, we cannot do the learning for her. And we assure her of our unconditional love, even if we get annoyed, irritated, or angry.

Ayen wrote these lines a few days before turning seventeen:

So what has my life made me? I have become a person who has seen a lot but not enough. I had my share of adventures and mishaps, and I am sure there will be more. I was able to touch lives in my own little way, and I’ll continue to do so. Lastly I was able to be myself and have people accept me as I am. My life is not like a fairytale or anything near that, but I am pretty blessed to have a life like this, and it is up to me to make it even better. I guess it is safe to say, that I will try to be the best Laraine V. dela Torre there is.

KARAYA, FORMING IMAGES

2007-07-22T21:57:00.000-07:00

there is a tagalog word, KARAYA, that means forming a mental image . this word is a powerful tool and allows us to imagine the many goals that our people, from the ancient times to the modern age, created and accomplished. all these goals that have been accomplished form part of our cultural legacy. legacies are valuable and so i choose to nurture the present by savouring the legacies of our people.

as i approach my fifty-seventh year, i visualize my legacy as enriching and more dynamic.
how do i do this ? by using my Karaya, my ability to see what i will be, how i will be and with whom i will be learning . each person i bring into my mental landscape will be someone who brings out the best in being Pinay. first will be Ed and Ayen, with whom i dream many things.

there is a 20/80 legacy birthing in my heart. a pareto principle in making goals manifest in our lifetime. this will be the next theme in my karaya blog.

celebrating ed's 64 th birthday

2007-07-14T02:06:00.000-07:00

my husband, ed, just turned 64 this july. i gave him a surprise party with all our friends gifting him
with a beatle concert. inviting around 200 people by sms was a tedious task. designing the potluck menu was the most arduous chore since some friends wanted to cook their favorite dishes, some wanted to buy fast food with their busy schedules and some asked for advice so as to please us.

imagine the company of 130 people - activists, community educators, artists, ngo and corporate executives, political party apparatchiks, media professionals and lawyers in one venue , having fun, dancing, eating and drinking, using the occasion as a reason for being together. it was one of the enjoyable gigs this year, jamming and dancing till 1 am. we were sergeant pepper's happy heart club for one night.

so friends, celebrate birthdays and make your enjoyment greater than your effort (dan sullivan's law of lifetime growth).

seeds for braingain

2007-07-02T02:52:00.000-07:00

If we want our brains to grow, you can learn how to use the energy of positive thinking and visualization. Start the day with a specific goal and timeline, select five steps to realize the goal.

Use your timeline to use the seeds of positive thinking. Map your space with feeling good.
When you are about to end the day, 45 minutes before sleeping, look at your goal record,
check your resources, then turn off all electronic gadgets in your bedroom and sleep.

When you wake up, exercise, then head for your goal's five steps. You will get your dreamgoal, desire granted.

Body Talk after a journey

2007-06-19T20:12:00.001-07:00

One week of JETLAG and BODY TALK

After a week of coming home, my body is still in orbit,missing the cool summer of helsingor and the spring flowers of netherlands. my head aches from the humidity of quezon city. amazing that the body is out of comfort in one's home. the heat makes me feel dizzy when i was just a month's absent. now i know how the migrant pinoys and pinays feel when they visit.

Jetlag is really a way of feeling slowly what the other time, the overseas time, gave you. my eyes wake up when the sun turns to the west, my stomach grumbles when the time for potatoes step into the hour, funny that my senses get to rewind as the sun turns to the east.

I should remember to tuck into my stomach the comfort food of home when i fly overseas in the near future. It should uncolonize the ease with which danish,dutch and italian food have conquered my guts.

coming home

2007-06-12T20:10:00.000-07:00

PAGLALAKBAY AT PAG-UWI

Coming home from a long journey is a joy by itself. I find my body giving in to the comforts of familiarity, breathing in sweet air and feeling the texture of home.

The trip to denmark, netherlands and italy gave our family the fullness of friendship. We met new and old friends. We ate bread, pasta and all the good things the three countries are famous for. Salamat sa lahat. We have many fine things, inside our heads and hearts.

The street we live in welcomes us. We are home. Grace flows and we are thankful.

punctuations and commas for cross conversations

2007-06-06T01:48:00.000-07:00

i have been in denmark for three weeks learning cultural dashes and punctuations. there is a flowing comma and dashes in many cross cultural conversations. i found the best in the danish-pilipino women, how they see being danish in their heart but how the pinoy culture weaves through their womb energies, not as rational as the cognitive learning they get from the first pinoy generation but just as effusive and embracing. i call these commas culture bearing poles.

being danish and pinay is as challenging as being swiss and pinoy, italian and pinay,dutch and pinoy. i speak after listening. i dont represent the generation of purebred pinays though my womb's lining bears the stains of colonized breeding.

this coming month of july, when i return to pinas, i will write how and what i learned from listening for a month to danish,dutch,swiss and italian conversations, commas and punctuations.....with a pinay brackets.

KA in Indigenous Filipino psychology

2007-04-14T02:23:00.000-07:00

Ka is a keyword in Pinoy psychology. it starts with a social context and builds on a relationship based on inclusivity/sameness. When we use KAIBIGAN, friend, the KA terms of endearment starts. We listen to you as our own kind, inclusive. So when you hear Pinoys addressing people as Ka Nena, that is a true sign of respect.

In our next blogging, please use our word KA, kausap (co-conversant) and we will reach levels of awareness that will delight both of us.

Graduation

2007-04-02T19:59:00.000-07:00

April 2nd was Ayen's graduation from high school to college. Finally our daughter is on her way to another journey in life. Ed and I are really proud of her. Ayen discussed with us what she will be doing in preparation for college. She will attend the Vinterskolen course this summer in Denmark and then prepare for the college entrance tests in the Philippines. In 2008, she will enroll in the winter course of the Danish International People's Folkjoskole and study democracy with students from 30 countries. This hopefully will widen her perspective and allow her to decide what career path to choose from. After winter, she will then enroll in a Philippine university,taking the study course she wants for her lifework.We will support Ayen in her vision and help develop the opportunity to realize what she wants.The freedom to choose and visualize a future is what graduation from high school means to her,to us.

How many daughters can have this vision? How many parents can empower their children and work towards a goal chosen by their children? Not many daughters, not many parents. We think we are the product of an educated generation, that we owe our parents all that we are now. But now that we have daughters who think for themselves and who have purpose and determination, they will have a better chance in transforming the inequities of our educational system. We wish Ayen and her generation success.Mabuhay ka Ayen! You are an Outstanding Student.

War and Peace

2007-04-01T00:05:00.000-07:00

I see so much violence in media and entertainment. What to see and what to do ?
Take a movie,300,that is popular among the young. This movie dramatizes the Spartan
warriors and the war values - no mercy, no weakness, a beautiful death by fighting.
In this movie,scenes after scenes roll with the decapitation,mutilation of thousands of Greeks by Persians who are portrayed as killing machines,as mutants and deformed devils. I sensed a certain mood in the audience, a riveting attention to gore and death. Why?

Do we not seek love in life? Do we not want peace in our life? Why do we extoll the virtues of the warrior? Look at the wars that have been waged for centuries - they all reek of plunder, betrayal and hatred.Why do we find these germs in our entertainment?

I believe in true love and the way towards peace. I do not seek honor in battle nor want a beautiful death by becoming a warrior. I would never want a Spartan warrior for a brother nor for a husband. Peace,love and justice should be the core of our entertainment.

HUSH, sandali po

2007-03-29T20:35:00.000-07:00

People rush these days. We hope to accomplish many things by rushing.
Do you hear RUSH? it rhymes with HUSH and so let's be still,be here.

When we listen to our biological clock, we hear HUSH,SSSHHH
That's what we do, Ed and I. Hush my loving partner. Hush my loving Ayen.
Breathe through,welcome the pause.

Learning to wait is a mastery of the moment. Splendid moment. This is
ginhawa - a hush in time, bringing you to a sensibility that is in synch with the life within. Our heart beats in this rhythm.This is what babies feel and what they respond to.

HUSH,sandali po,may ginhawa.

SIGLA,Vita, Vim

2007-03-28T19:03:00.000-07:00

Today i embrace sigla. I feel a little loss,after my partner lost his bag
due to a long working day. it wasnt stolen, it was just out of sight.
of course for us, the money, the credit cards, the id cards, the many working
items lost will have to be reconstructed.

I often wonder about loss,what Pinays feel when they go overseas and lose their sense of identity. Crossing cultural borders,finding people who do not have the same sense of kapwa-tao. Feeling as a non-citizen, or being invisible - this is the situation of many OFWs. Friends like Chato had to struggle and use their sigla to become visible, to gain respect as a citizen. There are many stories of PINAY SIGLA and i draw inspiration from these life narratives.

Perhaps one day, Pinays will live in a better world, borderless, where the loss of an identity is unheard of ,where Sigla is ever present,rediscovering the vigor in pakikipagkapwa-tao, and socializing is a joy with fellow citizens.

Pagbubuo, paghihiwalay . getting reorganized

2007-03-26T19:25:00.000-07:00

Ang isang buhay ay maraming bahagi. Kung may nabubuo, may nahahati.
In making a life counts, a Pinay will go for the whole deal. Even in building a relationship, a Pinay will give her one hundred per cent. Only when she feels that she cannot give more, that she has given everything and not one breath more, will she ask what is she receiving ? But then there is the paradox, we dream of becoming whole with another person. We wish for a love that sustains us, for the joy of being loved unconditionally.

So what happens when we do not get unconditional love? When someone breaks love into transactional units, each affection traded for a bigger sacrifice? Do we become smarter and calculate what love can buy?

Pinays have a wide and deep kalooban. The kalooban defines our self-perception, the core of our being. We fill this kalooban with breath, with ginhawa, with the energy that keeps growing with various human endeavours.

When our kalooban feels heavy,tight and unbearable,we explode into pieces. The crisis of severing ties, of divorcing is one situation where a Pinay needs to regain her personhood. This crisis magnifies how she became whole and divided - the paradox of loving and not loving herself. There is the deep pain of not loving, or never having been loved unconditionally.

How to move into another whole? The sense of being One, the sense of being an AKO is achieved in many ways, and time is just a platform. The easy part is forgiving oneself for having drained one's kalooban, for letting it dry up, for not reaching out to many others who stood by her. The best part is making the lessons greater than the sacrifice and the sense of being small, broken up.

Pagbubuo becomes a gift of oneself. Buo and matibay, whole and strong like the bamboo.

PAGTULONG - HELPING

2007-03-22T20:49:00.000-07:00

Each day,we find all kinds of requests for help from people.
Pinoys enjoy helping, ang pagtulong ay pakikipagkapwatao.Helping allows one to grow as a human being.
The pinoy age-old trait of helping is very alive in indigenous communities.
The Aytas always welcome people and they feed visitors with their best harvest.
In contrast,the urban elite and middle class will usually help if they gain
from the transaction,either the goodwill or what we know as utang na loob.LOOB,or the personal
core is key to helping behavior.

To get help and receive help,being in synch with the LOOB of Pinoys
is a good guide.When we feel" magaan ang loob",feeling well towards another,helping is a joy,not a chore.

The range of psychological states,from lightness to heaviness,
defines the depth and frequency of helping behavior of Pinoys.
We help because nakakaginhawa
sa taong tinutulungan at sa taong tumutulong.Ginhawa sa lahat,that's the
governing principle of Pinoy help.

Wishes for my maryknoll friends

2007-03-20T20:37:00.000-07:00

today, i am sending all the loving energies to my maryknoll classmates
and friends,forty years ago. i have not seen them for four decades
and yet i sense them them nearby. there are positive feelings that
i can tap into and will transform these energies into honoring
the people who make batch 66,maryknoll,lucena city,philippines.

the names i mention are the people who are ever-present.they make daily visits
to my online garden. marita v & baby c,whose laughter gets online chatting
a boost to my immune system.vanghie s,whose devotion to all is sumptuous.
i welcome every date with joann m,annabel c,chi s,peewee t,dettie,myrna
& pat l who are everready to expand life in pinas with joyfood shared.
i offer garlands to mayette h,connie n,atet r -
who were my childhood playmates.i also played with helen g,lourdes b,
lorna a,evelyn j,chita a,nomie g & jocelyn r!they are women/men of grace and strength now.

there are many men to dance with - mannyl,boy e,charlie v/bless him,stephen m/bless him too, larry c,eugene t,balthazar c,julian s,but i have to ask for patience in this moment.my fifty-seven years knees and bum cant twist and shout as fast.

am just halfway here so please post your comments. my golden synapses
will certainly shine if eldred v,josephine z,zosima,susan g,and all the
members of batch 66 drop by to sweeten this life. welcome to my web!!

conversing with anais nin

2007-03-20T20:09:00.000-07:00

today i will invite anais nin, a feminist who have crossed beyond.
i like what she wrote and let me paraphrase it in sikolohiyang pinay terms:
"we write to taste life twice".we pinoys write to eat,to savour each taste,
to fill our hunger,licking our fingers with every word and meaning.

"do you live each meaning? to this query ,anais nin says
" i postpone death by living,by suffering, by error,by risking,
by giving,by loving." we pinays seizethe moment by
dancing,singing,loving,laughing,suffering,offering everything
just so we will get to be in the limelight.watch our telenovelas,
ourlunchtime shows,they are our windows to life and
why we are who we are.. our scripts are full of pinay sense,
crying,laughing,singing,dancing,hugging -
the breathe of joy,irrepressible even under repression.

do you ever wonder how we survived five centuries of ecstatic plunder?

Earning a living, Suki

2007-03-19T17:35:00.000-07:00

A Filipino goes to the market to find a suki. She is there to find a reliable customer who will give her a living. The business of selling and buying is a pakikipagkapwaTAO.

Each day that a Pinay goes to make a living,she engages people as people.
The simple gesture of offering the first sale as buena mano,good luck,
is the first gesture.When a discount is given to the first customer,
the seller Pinay is inviting the customer to patronize her business.
When the customer accepts the invitation,she becomes the suki
and this suki-relationship
is the business of earning a living,paghahanap-buhay.

In the Pinay business culture,a customer is a friend who deserves to get
fair treatment,who is the source of buena mano (good luck).

Are you a suki in life?

Adding life to years?BUHAYiN ang mga tao

2007-03-19T17:23:00.000-07:00

The paradox of our time is that we have taller buildings
but shorter tempers,wider expressways but narrower
viewpoints.

We buy more but enjoy less,we have many conveniences
but less time.We rush a lot and have not learned to wait.
We get more knowledge but less wisdom, more experts,
bigger disasters.

We compete a lot,cooperate less.We have done larger things,
but not better things like conserving our forests/lakes
and maintaining a healthy climate.

We are angry a lot,love seldom.We've added tears to life,
not life to years.

(from a friend Jana Mora who keeps quoting these lines via sms).

KASAGANAAN - PROSPERITY

2007-03-18T20:42:00.000-07:00

I dream daily that our children and women will have prosperity.
No more starving children in the streets. No more
begging mothers with naked babies.No more illness stalking
the majority of our citizens.

Kasaganaan is a Pinoy value.We wish our country's resources
that used to be so rich would make everyone's life prosperous.
After five hundred years, we are one of the poorest nations.
How to change this aweful situation is our current challenge.

In my three decades' work in development networks, one of the
renewable resources we have is CREATIVITY. Being creative means
having a sense of freedom, intellectually and socially.

The attitude is " I take all knowledge to be ours."
In this life, we learn from all experiences, directly and indirectly.
Making our lessons greater than the sum of all experiences is the key.
We can benefit from reflections, from synthesizing the available
knowledge of the various cultures in the world.

I propose that all of us share knowledge - in the manner that
software developers advocate the open codes and standards (FOSS)
in the web. Treating knowledge as common creative resources
is the way towards KASAGANAAN. The WEB is a very rich resource
and our children are growing already as web knowledge-creators-users.

Let then make our contribution greater than our status,as Dan Sullivan
of LifeGrowth shares.

Be a lifelong learner and mentor.

PAGMAMAHAL- LOVING

2007-03-15T22:27:00.000-07:00

Pagmamahal, loving is a wonderful source of energy.
After going through the path of loving people, I discovered
that i can travel into life's web and scan people's states.

It took me fifty years to understand why love is the fuel of all beings.
This pagmamahal is the most abundant resource any being can have.

There is this story of a Japanese who wanted to rebuild his house.
He had to tear a wall and upon tearing, he saw a lizard nailed to the wall.
The wall was built ten years ago and the lizard was still alive.
He wondered how it could survive ten years of not moving.
As he pondered,another lizard came with food and fed the nailed lizard.
This lizard may have been the caregiver of the stuck lizard for a decade!

There are many of us who are stuck in a difficult wall, even crucified
but we survive because some one takes the effort of feeding us daily.
Love is the key to life's miracles.

TRAVELS

2007-03-14T18:48:00.000-07:00

Going somewhere? I do and it is one of the most fascinating journeys.
It's free and there is no passport control. You do not need
any luggage nor money.

Meditation is by far one of the best journeys everyone can take.
I go every morning and evening. When you greet the day with an inner
wish to live fully you will find the path towards a
beautiful mountain, a valley,a seashore,
even walk in familiar places.

Breathing like a baby, I go first to familiar places
where I have family and friends.You start with closing your eyes,
breathing deeply down to the solar plexus and navel,
quieting your head, sitting in a relax state until a whole vista
opens up. It is a paradox, with closed eyes and a quiet heart,
you enter a place that gives you your past, present
and maybe your future homes.
I call these episodes paglalakbay-diwa.
I recommend it to everyone.

People you love may not be present when you go into
these homesbut when you summon them,
they come and you feel love embracing all.

People whom you feel anxious for -
they may be ill or in stressful situations -
can be healed if you invite them
to healing gardens or valleys.
Daily meditation helps in healing family,
friends and people you want to help.

Write me when you want to learn how to do paglalakbay-diwa.

KABUTIHAN

2007-03-12T19:23:00.000-07:00

KABUTIHAN or goodness is a trait that many Pinays exhibit. It is part of our personhood and is a precious trait. When you meet a Pinay, expect kabutihan from her.

Our kabutihan is the primary trait and we treat others as kapwa mabuting tao.
How?
Hindi mayabang Humble
Magalang Respectful
Masipag Productive
Mapagkakatiwalaan Trustworthy
Mapagmahal Loving
These five traits make up our renewable resource base for the 21st century.

LISTENING

2007-03-11T17:06:00.000-07:00

LISTENING in PINOY CONVERSATIONS

this weekend, i realized that listening in Pinoyconversations is pakikiramdam at pakikinig.
it is looking deeper into the context of what people are saying, not just themeaning but who the person is and what is she feeling when she tells her stories.

in our culture, pakikinig is not just hearing,but alsogetting to know the people who want to tell their stories. it is common to hear many people talk at the same time in Pinoy conversations. people from the WEST find it difficult to talk and listen when Pinoys converse. they have to ask that people talk one by one and listen quietly but they dont know that most Pinoys listen even when they are talking.

dont we talk and listen with our hearts? pakikiramdam is the keyword and it is useful to observe the various conversations that Pinoys engage in.

lifelong learning as kapwa-tao

2007-03-08T20:22:00.000-08:00

today, i am thinking that reality have various platforms , from the live, actual daily living to virtual,digital and spiritual platforms. am writing this blog to invite women and men who
want to learn lifewide skills in finetuning our perceptions of why we are here and what is
the joy in helping people.

my first insight is : imagination is a good platform to organize daily living. making each day a creative activity and helping see deeper into connectivity.HOW?
pakikiramdam at pagpapalalim ng kalooban upang maging isang KAPWA. ako ay isang sikolohistang Pinay at mayaman na sa paghabi ng kasaysayan ng pakikipagkapwa-tao.