A Course in Miracles - Day 9

I see nothing as it is now.

This lesson alludes to the belief that nothing on this Earth is real.  Everything I see here in this life is an illusion.  Illusions are temporary and cease to exist once their purpose is served.   Only what is real is permanent.

Lost and Found

Before the popularity of the automobile GPS, making a wrong turn was a common occurrence.  I made a few of them myself.  Getting lost is not an idea of fun for many people.  However, for me making a wrong turn always turned out to be more of an adventure rather than an unfortunate event. Sometimes I would even discovered new shortcuts or hidden eateries that would later became favorite hangouts.

The path I take in my daily life is safe and predictable.  But the price of security is the lack of adventure and the absence of new experiences.  It's OK to make a wrong turn once in a while.  I dare to even say that a wrong turn is a blessing from God, who taps us on the shoulder to remind us that there is more to see than what our blinders are showing us.

Running with the Blinders On

It's amazing how much I don't see what's right in front of me.  I must have crossed the street and explored the path that surrounds Buffalo Bayou a thousand times since elementary school.  However, only today did that I find out about Glenwood Cemetery, an 84 acre landmark of Houston that is literally across the street from where I live.

Only today did I realize that the wild strawberry bush my siblings and I used to pick was at the edge of this cemetery.  If only we had walked another 100 feet beyond the strawberry bush, we would have seen this cemetery.

Only today did I finally understand why Memorial Drive is named "memorial".  The last President of the Republic of Texas, 4 Texas governors, and more than 20 Houston mayors are buried here.

Only today did I realize that if I had just stopped and looked past the trees that line Memorial Drive, I would have seen this famous cemetery.

Only today did I realize I have been running along Buffalo Bayou with blinders on...like a horse with its blinders to prevent it from seeing anything else besides what's directly in front of it.

A Time to Clean

I recently cleaned a room that hasn't been cleaned for a long time.  All of the old stuff was either removed or stored away.  What used to look like a storage area is now fit to be called a bedroom.  The cleaning job was infectious, because soon after I was done with the room I started to clean the rest of the bedrooms, the bathroom, the hallway and the stairs.  Things haven't looked this orderly since years.

This morning I peaked in my mom's room and saw that she had taken the time to organize the things in her own room.  She even gotten herself a new night stand.  Her room hasn't changed much over the last 10 years...until now.  All these changes happened because I cleaned a room.  This is how to change the world...one room at a time, one person at a time.

A Course in Miracles - Day 8

My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.

Everything I know of the world is shaped by an experience of the past.  Therefore, without even realizing it I project past experiences upon the things I see instead of seeing them for what they are.

Because all my thoughts are based on events of the past, being preoccupied with them is a waste of time.  The past no longer exists.  It exists in my mind only when I am preoccupied with it.  And when I am preoccupied with the past, I no longer live in the present...which also means I am blocking myself from seeing Truth.

Every time I am preoccupied with the past or worried about the future, I am essentially at a stand still.  My mind may be busy, but there is no new knowledge nor is there personal growth.  Ironically, only when my mind is devoid of thoughts can I see clearly and receive new ideas and experiences, eventually leading to personal growth.

Neither past nor future is real...except in the minds of its creator.

A Course in Miracles - Day 7

I see only the past.

Lesson 7 is the first 6 lessons combined.
It is the reason why nothing that I see means anything.
It is the reason why I have given everything I see all the meaning that it has for me.
It is the reason why I do not understand anything I see.
It is the reason why my thoughts do not mean anything, and why they are like the things I see.
It is the reason why I am never upset for the reason I think.
It is the reason why I am upset because I see something that is not there.

Everything I see and every thought I have is dependent on some experiences in the past.  Therefore, I see only the past.

A Course in Miracles - Day 6

I am upset because I see something that is not there.

I am angry at M. because I see something that is not there.
I am worried about Y. because I see something that is not there.
I am depressed about Z. because I see something that is not there.

Whatever may be the form of upset I am having, the reasons that are causing my upset are my own creations.  The state of misery that I am in is solely constructed from my own mind, which is free to create a whole different kind of state filled with joy and happiness if I allow it to do so.

A Course in Miracles - Day 5

I am never upset for the reason I think.


There are no small upsets.  They are all equally disturbing to my peace of mind.


Ever since I started this course I had been looking forward to this lesson...not that I read ahead and knew it was coming, but I had suspected that it exists all along.  Traditional Chinese Medicine talks about the Evil 7 Emotions, which are powerful agents that bring disharmony to the spirit, mind, and body.  Most of the time the reasons why we get angry, or scared, or worried do not matter.  The emotions would take over our psyche and we would feed them with any kind of reasons, which could be irrational or rational.


Principles of Miracles #49:  The miracle makes no distinction among degrees of misperception.  It is a device for perception correction, effective quite apart from either the degree or the direction of the error.  This is its true indiscriminatesness.

Christmas 2011

Years from now I would probably look back on certain moments in my life and decide whether or not they were pivotal.  Christmas 2011 will be one of those pivotal moments.  Things tend to come in threes and this pivotal moment is no exception.

It began with Samantha giving me the book A Course in Miracles, which is slowly breaking down all my previous preconceptions.  As Pablo Picasso had said, "The destruction of the old gives birth to the new.  Creativity is first of all an act of destruction."

A day later I had to babysit Sam the whole day on Christmas Eve.  This semi-alone time allowed me to watch the movie Mother Teresa for the first time.  I did not truly understand what it meant to be an instrument of God until just now.  Money, fame, power, and everything else of "value" will come easily when you walk the path that God had laid out in front of you...even when that path is to be among the poorest of the poor.  But when you are walking that path, none of those things means much.  They will be more likely to be distractions or even obstacles to your goals.   Such is the irony of creating miracles.

The last of the three events making up this pivotal moment came at Midnight Mass during the homily.  I found out that the Nativity scene of Jesus in the manger is not real. The scene was actually a construct from St. Luke's imagination to show Jesus as nourishment for us unenlightened dumb beasts.  Only an Archbishop could have broken down such an ingrained Catholic belief in my mind.  If that is not real, than what else isn't real remains in my preconception?  Plenty...

A Course in Miracles - Day 4

These thoughts do not mean anything.  They are like the things I see in this room.

The first few lessons in this course concentrate on nouns (person, place, or things).  Today lesson begins with a verb..."to think".

I have said before in this blog that thoughts are physical realities.  Therefore, this lesson is not so much different from the first three lessons.

Principles of Miracles #24:  Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead because you made sickness and death yourself, and can therefore abolish both.  You are a miracle, capable of creating in the likeness of your Creator.  Everything else is your own nightmares, and does not exist.  Only the creations of light are real.

A Course in Miracles - Day 3

I do not understand anything I see in this room.

Like Lesson 1 and 2, this lesson strives to remove any past association the object that I'm looking at may have.  I must see with the eyes of a newborn child...to see things as they are and not what they represent.

Principles of Miracles #8:  Miracles are healing because they supply a lack; they are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less.

A Course in Miracles – Day 2

I have given everything I see in this room all the meaning that it has for me.

At first glance Lesson 2 appears to be the same as Lesson 1. However, in this lesson an object has no meaning because I have taken its meaning away. I have the power to assign meaning to or removing meaning from an object.  It is the power to maintain my mind within its perceptual prison or to release my mind from it.

Principles of Miracles #23: Miracles rearrange perception and place all levels in true perspective. This is healing because sickness comes from confusing the levels.  

Needling the Earth

Last Tuesday marked the end of my first acupuncture class. Although I will have to take many more acupuncture classes in the future and have a lifetime of learning ahead of me, I begin to see some of the hidden secrets of this special art.

Points with names like Jing-Well, Shu-Stream, and He-Sea are not just metaphor examples. They actually describe the movement of Qi and compare its movement to the movement of water in our atmosphere and deep inside the Earth. It is no coincidence that the powerful points tend to reside within natural depressions on the surface of the body. These depressions are similar to the fertile valleys where elements necessary for growth come together in one spot to create a perfect environment for producing energy. The water cycle traces water movement through mountains, to streams, to rivers, to oceans, and finally as rain back to the mountains. Qi also has its own flow order, avoiding some parts while flooding other parts. Some parts of the body seems to be saturated with points, while other parts are sparsely populated. And not unlike the green-house effect created by heat being trapped under thick layers of polluted air, Qi can also be trapped and stagnated.

Certain acupuncture points can affect change in parts of the body that are much farther away from its location. For example, certain points in the feet can resolve problems in the head or chest. Perhaps certain parts of the Earth have a similar relationships. Wouldn't it be exciting to know that what happens to the river in New Orleans may directly affect the summer length in Barcelona? The idea seems ridiculous...but only as long as it is not observed by a child's eyes.

A Course in Miracles - Day 1

Nothing real can be threatened.

Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God.

And so it begins...A Course in Miracles.  One lesson per day for 365 days.  Each lesson will be recorded here.   Hopefully a noticeable change for the better will be seen by Christmas 2012.

First lesson:  Nothing I see in this room means anything.

There is no exception.

My rare Louis Armstrong trumpet does not mean anything.
My old wedding band does not mean anything.
The first gift Samantha ever gave me does not mean anything.
My own body does not mean anything.
My own son does not mean anything.


Nothing I see means anything.

To the Power of...

When I was much younger sometime I would wait for sleep by playing a game of doubling. One, two, four, eight, and so on...  I would challenge myself to how many “doublings” I could do. When I got to 1024 (2 to the exponential power of 10) I thought I was doing a pretty good job. However, it didn't take long after that for me to give up the never ending task and to choose sleep instead.

In 1965, Gordon Moore from Intel predicted with amazing foresight that the number of transistors on a microprocessor chip would double every 2 years, enabling its complexities to grow exponentially. Since 1965, it had double 23 times.  In 46 years the number of transistors had grown 8,388,608 times its original size. Imagine how complex it would get if given 200 years...or 2,000 years... or 20 billion years.

In the beginning there was only darkness; then came light. Then came heaven and earth, land and ocean, mountains and valleys, etc. The story of Eden started with one man, Adam... then came Eve. Soon later came Cain and Abel and their off-springs. The story of every human being begins with a zygote, then it divides itself into two, then four, and so on...until trillions of cells later you see a miracle every time you look into the mirror.

To experience a miracle we need not look far. We just need to look with the right perspective.

Be Happy

Before moving to Houston, our family lived in Chicago for about 1 year.  It was long enough for me to experience one of American great childhood tradition...to go away for camp.  I remember that it lasted only 2 or 3 days, but it left a lasting impression.  All kinds of activities were offered: archery, canoeing, arts and craft, horseback riding, basketball, soccer, softball, etc.  I can't remember exactly how it happened, but I signed up for boxing.

Maybe I chose boxing because the line for it was short.  No sooner after I got in line was I called into the ring.  I saw my opponent for the first time as the supervisor (a teenager) put the gloves on me.  The kid stood facing me must have been the biggest kid in that gym.  But before I could make a connection between the big kid and the short line, my chin got in the way of his glove and a second later I kissed the mat.  Needless to say the rest of the round was a massacre.  The referee had to stop it early before the full 3-minute round was scheduled to end... at about 30 seconds.  I remembered climbing out of that ring laughing.  It was one of the best 30 seconds of my life up to that point.

I think life is no different from that 30 seconds.  No matter what happens, I  am here because I want to be here.  And no matter what happens, it will end eventually.  So why not have fun and be happy during my time here on Earth.  I may have to wait a very long time before I have a chance to go back into that ring again.  

To cry or not to cry...

Three days ago I had a meltdown.  It lasted not more than a minute but it was very real.

The night before the meltdown, I had less than 4 hours of sleep.  I woke up that morning with severe pain in my right eye and found that Sam's head had been resting on it.  It must have been there for hours, because my cornea was warped enough to give me double-vision the rest of the day.  The whole day was wasted trying to study for final exams in Diagnosis of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture I, which are two most important classes in this semester.  But every time I sat down to read, my headache only got worse.

Frustrated and exhausted, I tried to turn in early that night.  But tried as hard as I could, I could not block out the neighbor's blaring TV, the educational shows from Sam's TV, and the Vietnamese soap opera from my mom's TV.  Every detectable sound was another nail pounding into what already was a severe migraine.  There was no escape.  I was trapped in this situation, trapped in this apartment, trapped in this body, and trapped in this life.  I wished I could just press a thermonuclear detonator and fry everything...or scream like a banshee and shatter everything around me.

The meltdown was well on its way to develop into a full-scale panic attack when I had an epiphany.  If ever there was a mission from God for me, this was it.  I am here, at this moment, in this body, because no one else can do this mission but me.  This is my place in the universe.  I am a cornerstone in this part of the universe.  And with that epiphany, the meltdown disappeared as quickly as it came.

Nosce te ipsum (Know Thyself)

Boy:  Do not try and bend the spoon.  That's impossible.  Instead only try to realize the truth.

Neo:  What truth?

Boy:  There is no spoon.

Neo:  There is no spoon?

Boy:  Then you'll see that it is not the spoon that bends.  It is only yourself.

Once a while, I crank on The Matrix and get a dose of reality adjustment.  It is one of my all-time movie favorites.

Know thyself.  It will help you to knowing others.  It is also the first step on the road to mastery over self...which essentially is the same as mastery over your own world.

For every Yin there is a...

How do you create courage?  You give a child a soul full of fears but then you also give him a heart full of curiosity.  The drive to explore the world will drive him past his fears, breaking them down one by one until there is none left.  Courage is not the lack of fear but rather having fears and be willing to face them.

For a child full of fears, change is scary.  He seeks to maintain the status quo.  And he attaches himself dearly to whatever is familiar in his world.  Anything new entering this world is considered as a threat until proven otherwise.

How do you create leadership?  You give that child a soul of a rebel but at the same time a heart of full of justice.  He will question everything and reject the status quo.  He listens to no other voice except that of his own, because leadership avoids politics and reaches only for inspiration.

A rebel child practices detachment.  He knows the only thing that is constant in his universe is change.  He accepts change readily and actually excels when the change is at its most drastic.  So at what point does a rebel becomes a leader?  He becomes one when he learns the balance between attachment and detachment.  This is why the best teacher for a rebel child is a child full of fears.  And inversely the best teacher for Sam is me.

Fear of Love

Yesterday's entry was about how Love satisfies all human needs.  Today entry is about its counterpart...Fear.

Love and Fear goes hand-in-hand.  One is never far from the other.  Love gives rise to Fear, which in turn gives rise to Love.  One consumes the other and at the same time let itself be consumed by what it consumes. This is why most of the time we think we are doing something out of Love, when in fact the whole time we are under the influence of Fear.

There is no easy way of knowing what we do originates from Love or from Fear.  Most of the time the outer appearance  of the two is identical.  When we get coffee for our colleagues, are we doing it because we know they enjoy coffee or is it because we're afraid they think us inconsiderate?  When we push our children to excel in school, are we fulfilling their potentials or are we fulfilling our own prideful needs?  When we fall in love, are doing it because we want to share the richness of love with another or are we doing it because we are afraid to be alone?

However same they appear to be, the consequence of one is very much different from the other.  Fear seeks to control others.  Love seeks only to control self.  If you love yourself enough not lie to yourself, you will always be able to tell the difference.

Is a 3-sided pyramid a real pyramid?

Most people have heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, sometimes refer to as Maslow's pyramid. When Abraham Maslow proposed his theory in 1943, it struck a chord with the collective consciousness and it quickly became mainstream. What Maslow proposed was sound but how he presented his idea gave rise to an unexpected side-effect.

Arranged in the shape of a pyramid, the needs are arranged from base to apex...physiological to transcendence. The unintended side-effect is that most of us concentrate on the base first and work upward, leaving transcendence as the last item on our to-do list. Some of us don't have enough resources to get past the first 3 levels. Some of us do have enough resources, but are having so much fun at the first 3 levels and prefer to stay there instead of advancing. The excuses are too many to list here.

Delaying the journey inward for the sake of fulfilling physiological needs first is sad but it happens all too common. I am not here to say anything different about Maslow's proposal, but I do want to rearranging how he presented his needs.

Let's start out with 3 basic “needs”: the love for God, the love for others, and the love for self. And let's make it simple in the begining by arranging them into circles that are linked, specifically called the "trinity circle". The love for self would include most of Maslow's lower needs, the love for others the middle-level needs, and the the love for God the upper level needs.  All three needs are interrelated. None is isolated from the rest.

We can even reshape this trinity circle into the shape of a pyramid in keeping with the original intent of Maslow. It would look like a 3-sided pyramid and its cross-section would look like a triangle with 3 equal areas. No matter where you slice this pyramid from base to apex, the three areas are always present and equal.  So whichever stage you are in your life, you are always aware of all three needs.  Unlike Maslow sequential manner of satisfying needs, this pyramid requires a simultaneous manner.

In case a young whipper-snapper were to pull up this blog 50 years from now and start to rearrange my “rearrangement”, I'm going to make another leap. The trinity circle is actually a symbol of one circle. The love for God, the love for others and the love for self is in actually the same thing... just Love.  And Love must exist along side its counterpart Fear.  So we come full circle to the one symbol that has been around for thousands of years.

   

What Really Matters?

Positive space versus negative space. It's what all artists struggle with. It's the difference between scientific writing and poetry. One reads what is printed, the other reads between the lines.

When Einstein proposed this famous E=mc2 in 1905, he shocked everyone. The amount of energy stored inside a single atom seemed impossible. The mass of an atom is the sum of its protons, neutrons and electrons...all of which comprises less than 1% of the volume of that atom. The other 99% is just empty space, right?

What is not visible to our detectors does not equate to nonexistence. The negative space matters...and it matters a lot. What lies between the protons and the electrons are what holds everything together. It's what makes our bodies feel solid. It's what holds the planets in their orbits. It's where our subconscious and super-conscious lives. The matter we can detect with our senses are not what really matters. It's the other 99% that really matters.

Both read the Bible day and night, but thou read black where I read white.
- William Blake

So it is written...

Lately I've been digesting a lot of Paul Coelho's writing, who seems to mirror a lot of my own thoughts but who can phrase them so much more eloquently.  Whenever I read one of these familiar phrases I ask myself why am I reinventing the wheel?  In fact, what is being said in this blog has been said many times over before...and not just by Paul Coelho, but also by the Bible, the Q'ran, Buddha, Lao-Tzu, self-help books, movies, poetry, comic books, etc. infinitum.  Does that mean I should stop?

The answer is an unequivocal "No", because no matter now many times a truism is repeated it needs to be expressed one more time by you in your own words for the most important audience of your life...yourself.

Tug-o-War part 2...or more accurately the Give-and-Take

Sometimes it takes more than one day for God to teach me His lessons.  He likes to wait for me to write down the first half before teaching the second half because I am likely to botch the whole lesson if given the whole thing at once   :D

I talked about the struggle between being a child and a master yesterday.  This struggle is actually more like an awkward silence between you and God.  Sometimes we need a moment to think before we can say anything intelligent.

Like the relationship between day and night, the relationship between child and master is inextricably linked.  One is form, the other formless...ice and water...stone and sand.  The child state is non-knowing, like a blank page.  That of the master is all-knowing, but only within defined boundaries.  The two states constantly transform from one to the other.  In the physical world the transformation requires waiting, but inside the soul the transformation is instantaneous...and continuous.

When you can get past the awkward silence, your conversation with God flows.  You hear Him best when all your hearts are open as a child; and He hears you best when you speak to him with the heart of a master.

The Eternal Tug-o-War

I saw a documentary yesterday about Master Chef Yan Jingxiang.  He is a humble man with little education.  He was sent to the kitchen to work at the age of 5 because his parents were too poor to send him to school.  He knows little except for what is inside a Chinese kitchen.  But when he is inside his kitchen, what he does is nothing short of magic.

All children have the potential to become masters.  Which kind of masters depends on how they choose.  Whether you like to admit it or not, each of us constantly struggles with this choice...to become a master or to remain a child...or any kinds of combination in between.  A child seeks an answer for everything.  A master seeks answers only for himself.

The choice to become a master requires sacrifices...including all your "other potentials".  A child has many hearts, but a master has only one heart.  Being a master is being the purest of that heart.   It is an act of living your purpose with all your mind and soul.  To do that, you must forego other gifts.  The universe must destroy something before it can manifest something else.  We cannot be expected to do anything less.

To know your path is to be blessed.  Once the choice is made, there is no longer struggle.  What remains is the task of removing excess knowledge.  Master Chef Yan Jingxiang does not know the difference between a treble clef and a bass clef, nor does he care to.  He is a wizard in his own universe...and everything that he needs to know outside his kitchen can be drawn from his own universe.

What makes an artist?

I saw on the news that Belgium's credit rating dropped today, following the trend set by Greece, Italy, and Spain.  Of course, what jumped off the cliff first was actually across the Atlantic...the USA.  The European countries are only imitators.

The swan who thought herself ugly was trying to imitate the ducks.  She only became beautiful when she stopped thinking she was a duck.

An artist who can reproduce perfect copies of any Michelangelo painting is not an artist but an imitator.

We are all artists.  Our artistry depends on the way we live our the lives.  We have a choice to make that life a masterpiece or a piece of forgery.  Unless you live your life, you are only an imitator.