My answer to my friend was: "I have become myopic." By this, I meant that I have become nearsighted, putting my own blinders, neither looking up and around, but straight forward and focused on situations around me. I have learned to look only at the task at hand, fulfilling it the best way I can. I have defined my parameters to activities and people that I can touch and make a difference in. These may not be great or big, but I consciously put my energies into shared group endeavors that attempt to make a difference – no matter how small.
Lest people misunderstand what I mean by myopia, let me explain. People with myopia are able to see objects close up clearly but objects at a distance seem blurry. Taking a tip from being nearsighted, and using this as a parallel in our lives today, what I mean is we must try to focus and concentrate our energy so we can contain it closer to our core.
Let’s take another tip from science: Quantum physics, the new science that suggests that everything in this world (both seen and unseen – from a tiny molecule to the vast extra-terrestrial space), is composed of energy vibrating at different speeds. To bring one’s energy inward is to condense it into a smaller field, which makes energy more potent and concentrated. Let’s take the example of the laser beam where photon energy of light is concentrated. Laser light can be highly intense – so intensely powerful that it is able to cut steel and other metals.
When we focus inward and concentrate on our own energies, become aware of them and begin our own inner transformations, we will soon influence our surroundings. We all have to be conscious that something deeper is happening here and now. On the national front, with no directions or inspiration from leaders, desperation is beginning to take root within the hearts and minds of everyone. Subtle signs show we are waking up to understand that changes in the "bigger picture" of our national front cannot happen unless changes come from deep within us.
If we trace our history, we will find a mystical theme unfolding in our story as a people – all our Philippine revolutions were spiritual revolutions. They stemmed from the search of looking for that "kaliwanagan" or "the light." From heroes like Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio, spiritual folk leaders of the collorums, the first People Power – the real visionary call was to dive deep into one’s kalooban or inner being. Only when transformative changes happen deep inside, only when we have taken away our false starry eyed belief that a leader or a foreign culture can help us, only then will "light" shine through.
So, when we face the maze of negativities or petty irritations outside us (either in personal or national experiences), these provide the opportunity to go back to the roots of ourselves, our inner beings, our kalooban. And look squarely and honestly at what we find there. Where we find ourselves now is because we have brought ourselves here – either as a people in a national scale or as an individual weaving the causes and effects of our lives. When we develop the gift of intentionality, we will be able to carve out, with clear conscious awareness the path we want to take, the changes we want to make. Individually first, then collectively as a nation.
The power we do possess, as we all try to master our lower selves, is that we must counter, always counter whatever negativities or lower energies we can – either through good thoughts (energy in the mind and others that allow us to co-create our reality) or actions (moving energy that weaves our reality).
The fact that we are alive, here and now, experiencing all that brings forth the positive energies of light and love in whatever field of endeavor we are in. This, I believe, is our contribution to the great master plan we have committed to help bring forth in this broken world today.