I have just finished a very intense two-week retreat. The retreat took place at the borderline of Nevada and California in a place that was formerly a horse ranch. Surrounded by desert and mountains, the place is physically isolated from the hustle and bustle of normal life. On the way there, from the plane, Nevada looked blanketed in snow. When I got to the retreat site, there was snow everywhere. It was freezing! One morning, just after a day of howling wind, I awoke to find thick fresh snow everywhere. The wind was gone. Much as I don’t like cold, the snow was lovely. (I have to mention the North Face jacket I got from ROX in Bonifacio High Street. It is as light as a feather, doesn’t get crumpled, and even in zero-degree weather it kept me warm! It seems like it adjusts to climate, because I find I can wear the same jacket in Hong Kong or in the plane and not get overheated. If you are going to anywhere cold, this jacket is the one to buy.)
The retreat started with a talk on aspiration. In the corporate sector, one has goals, objectives, performance indicators, success indicators. If the business or the institution is to function at its peak, these elements are of absolute necessity.
In spiritual life and personal life, it’s the same thing. For purpose of terminology, I am going to call it aspiration. Dreams, hopes, objectives: what does your deepest heart yearn for?
Otherwise one will go through life experiencing it, but not making the most out of it. Just breezing through life and then one day it’s over. One is on one’s deathbed, reflecting on it all, but by then it will be too late.
Life is a journey. The journey can have an objective. Or it can just meander and end up being a waste of precious time.
The power of aspiration.
This is very different from New Year’s resolutions — which one makes and then shelves and forgets about.
This is my experience. When one creates an aspiration for oneself from the deepest heart and reaffirms it incessantly — feeling it, and also working towards it — and one offers it to the Divine, something magical happens. At the start of the retreat, I reflected and decided I would go forward to what I would like to be. I looked at my life in the Philippines, the kind of person I am, and the kind of person it would be good to be. I felt it like a yearning in my heart. Then I began to offer it daily... several times a day, in fact.
I also made an aspiration for the country: that it be saved from forces of greed and selfishness. That the rape would stop. And I offered this incessantly.
Then comes the second part of the recipe I would like to share with you: the “need to receive.” The Philippines is a Catholic country. So we pray. We ask. What I have found is that if one aspires sincerely, one should also give some space for receiving. And that’s what happened to me: I received big-time.
There is something to be said about retreats. One can go about the hustle and bustle of one’s daily life and still have some stirring in one’s heart. But when it is quiet and pristine and there are many like-minded individuals aspiring for their own personal growth, an environment is created where one’s feelings or yearnings are magnified. My intuitive perception is an energetic receptacle on which the heavens can land. I am also convinced that it is an environment in which the heavens can hear.
It’s hard to go deep when one is so busy. It’s hard to feel the subtlety and refinement of the Divine giving to you, making something out of you if there is no stillness in the environment. If there is no stillness in you.
Now the retreat is over and I feel like: Wow! What happened? I feel different. Something shifted.
Riding the bus on the way to airport, I looked at the landscape of mountains. Nevada is dry, arid land that seems to go on forever. I felt different. I feel more quiet now, more still. The aspect that I had wanted in myself which was my frustration in the past — at least for now — seems like a reality I will be able to rest on, to move toward. I am increasingly finding that part of myself that can remain above the fray. It’s peaceful. It’s also the part that can give back, big-time. I’ve seen the parts of myself that make life chaotic. That is an important part of the process: to see the parts that are off tangent.
The recipe? Aspire. Aspire from your deepest heart. Offer it to the Divine. Let that aspiration resonate with forces of Truth. Live life with integrity. Then receive. Receive as the forces of truth help you to be your highest self. Receive, listen as the forces of light guide you. My experience is that they do care about our country, our people. So let these forces of truth and light work through an enlightened administration, committed to do what is best for our people. As an aspiring heart, I continue to be forever grateful and increasingly in awe of the forces that guide this universe. Making a commitment to go the way of the sun is a good choice to make on Easter Sunday.
So this Easter, aspire with a feeling of no limits. Aim high. May the sun shine ever brightly on your life!!
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In my last column on osteoporosis I gave a contact number for the enzyme treatments. I need to put the correct number: 0917-5798523 and 0917-8034935. I was told the enzymes really build stronger and healthier bones so give it a try. What impressed me was how quickly the enzymes worked.
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I can be reached at regina_lopez@abs-cbn.com.