The special face of Hong Kong

It is so easy to socialize through technology and with machines in Hong Kong. In a way, I feel this option of virtual socializing, has made it more comfortable with a lot of people, than having true communication with real people here in this amazing city.

Personally, I have been “spoken to” in the same house with family through texts and emails rather than through speaking. Most significant expressions within my family have been conducted to me through whatsapp, rather than face to face.

Is this truly what communication has come to, or rather, not come to?

Have socializing through a virtual platform made it easier for people to avoid rather than commit to true communications? Where every “uncomfortable” topic or detail they feel can be made more comfortable by expressing it through a way that does not require us to see or have eye contact with the people we wish to communicate to, and perhaps then words expressed do not bear as much responsibility?

We all have to express. Expression is everything.  Everyone knows when expression is repressed, how much stress and strain we put our physical, emotional and other bodies under. But what is true expression? And have we taken an advancement in technology to perpetuate something which has the immense potential to connect people, and abused it in a way that is actually separative rather than unifying?

Texting apps available on smart phones as well as meeting through social platforms can definitely create a more convenient type of communication, where people can be brought together even when they are miles apart and in different time zones; or even within the same time zones, when the physical limitation of not being able to be at more than one place at a time (yet), we can multitask such as holding a meeting through skype while at the same time purchasing groceries for a dinner party. More than any time, we are now in a world where boundaries are no longer solid, family, work and life have the possibility of becoming one and unifying rather than completely separate ideas.

Hong Kong has a special flair of embracing technology. Here technology is welcomed rather than shunned because of fear. Everywhere in the city, people are seen serenading their hand-held machines. No fret, when we have no real socializing going on, there is always our friend, the machine, who can comfort us with a feel-good movie or excite us in a video game. Could it be that we have already felt sufficient that an inanimate object can ease our loneliness, with the added benefit that it does not come with all the messiness of relating and intimacy with people?

It may “work”, for a time. What I mean here is, untrue and unreal relating may distract us from the emptiness and the yearning to truly relate most of us feel.  But in what expense does this distraction brings?  And, what about the long term consequences? Personally, I have experienced an almost complete reliance on technology to even “see” another human being (apart from my child) during one year of my life, and that is even not regular or reception is never reliable. Honestly, how can reception through these unreal intimacies ever be smooth, when it is exactly a true intimacy that we fear? If I was not even willing to let people in who are physically close to me, how do I expect to nurture a true relationship that is miles apart? Geographic proximity is not the key, my choice to love out as well as loving in, is.

In a city where high rises decorate the skyline, it may be sad, but necessary to acknowledge that we are not a city that is built in true love. To maximize space for the highest financial return could not be a choice that is made out of true love. Yet, we are all loving human beings in the city, every single one of us. True, it may be harder for us to realize this for ourselves, with the circumstance and environment that is conditioning and running through us (if we do not choose otherwise for ourselves) every moment, but that does not refute the fact that, we are all love.

Everyone who allows themselves to truly feel, will know the essence of every single human being in this planet is unequivocally the same, and equal.

When technology is used not with the intention of true love, very easily it can become a tool for us to perpetuate lovelessness whether we are aware of it or not. Is loveless relating better than no relating? Is relating that is not out of true love, even relating at all? Perhaps it should be called separating, instead.

In the depths of our hearts, we all know the importance of true intimacy and true relating. We all feel our emptiness from time to time, even here in this sleepless “Pearl of the Orient”. Emptiness simply cannot be filled by more lovelessness. In-truth, our own emptiness cannot even be relieved by another person, or by our numbing or avoidance tactics. True intimacy and true relating have to first begin with ourselves. Emptiness can only be truly filled when we remember and consistently connect to and live our own love. With true relating with oneself, there will be the possibility of true relating with another, and another, and eventually, with the world.

In this present day, we seem to confine “intimacy” and “relationship” to only physical and romantic ones. Every single relationship, whether romantic or not, begins with the relationship to ourselves. True intimacy between a couple, does not magically happen with closing the bedroom door, but with each and every moment, both parties choosing to connect with themselves that extend to the sharing of this connection within the bedroom. Similarly, every other relationship that is not romantic, happens in the same way (just without the bedroom part).

Hong Kong, the magic is not out there . All the love, the beauty, the connection, the joy, the glory, the harmony are all right there, inside your heart.  You are so special Hong Kong, truly, in SO much more than you realize.

Advertisement

Let life be our art

A child can see and hear multitudinous more than a grown up, sometimes.  For we are all born with eyes and ears, nose, limbs and tongue, inside our hearts.

As a child I can feel so much going on, is not it.  It is not truth.  Simply because it does not feel right within my heart.  Yet, as a child, having such natural feelings can overwhelm, not so much because of feeling them, but more so how to communicate these feelings to a world, and be understood, when the world does not communicate in this way.  From very young, I have made up my mind, that no one would understand.

Yet, feeling I continued.

Growing up, my ears could hear so much more than what was spoken, all the honesty unexpressed, but niceties wrapped up in sugar and honey was how we communicated.  So I stopped speaking.  Because I do not know how to not speak truth–the truth of the reality that moment, and the truth which is absolute in my heart.

For many years I felt distraught, but never did I give up on the truth that my heart knows, although sometimes I chose to not heed it.  Not knowing how to otherwise, I began exploring this in art, (without studying it–my degree is in chinese studies) where possibilities are endless.  Art is an arena where beyond that of “reality” can be expressed freely, although, I was actually only wishing to express the reality that most have forgotten to be true.

I began taking pictures, from a second hand automatic camera.  I wrote and wrote and wrote to allow all the conflicts that I felt but have not expressed throughout the years to flow.  No coincidence that I got myself a job with no experience in photography or journalism, in a magazine publication.

I did not want to “create”.  I am not interested in making up something that I feel may be better.  I know there is a better.  And this better simply begins with being loving to every single being. I only wanted to express this in all ways possible with this vehicle.

And thus, life, has become my art and my medicine.

The Real Me

From young I taught my child the real him is that which is, and everything else is that which is not.

The real him is when he is simply living his Essence, nothing but the open radiance that he is. He is openly loving, not in contraction in needing love. He is pure joy and no living being can argue that.

As a wee babe, he lives this state much more. With growing up, he has chosen to experience other states which are not the full truth of him. Just like everyone of us.

Consequently, there will be more time when he is lost in the emotions that run him—anger, especially, and if he continues to deny his overwhelming feelings, he will very frequently turn to numbing activities such as television and video games, in attempts to block out these feelings.

Only because of my own long and tedious journey and eventual choice to return, has allowed me the awareness to witness my child’s process. And honestly, never is this easy for a mother to face in truthfulness.

Some moments I will fall into the emotional trap too, other times in desperation I may revert to control, only because I have absorbed my son’s pain, which sometimes ignite my own and am looking desolately for a way out of it. Yet these never work in the true sense, as they do not bring either of us back to the harmony that we are.

I began testing other ways, for my boy, as well for myself. I allowed him his time and his outbreaks if necessary, but rather than taking the energy on, I worked on my own non-interference and non-absorbing skills. When I am more than not in my own inner-heart, the stillness remains even though my baby is in an outburst, and how immensely important it is for me to be that stillness, especially when he is not, for the both of us.

This morning, my child woke up after a deeply revitalizing sleep. He came to me in a strong hug and said, “I am the true me”.

I held him tight, looked straight into his eyes, and said, “This, is what I would like to honor you for, the whole and true you. Not your grades at school, not anything else, but this. Even if you only live this for a brief moment, because of my Love for you, I would like to remind you of this.”

What more do we live for in life, but for these moments of Soul-full connection, when one by one, we remember. With remembrance and honesty, then the choice becomes ours. And there is nothing more precious than meeting each other in our trueness.

I truly love you.

It is all very quiet

It is all very quiet.

Crowds everywhere, nicam languages, money clothes, unending dining, new year merchandise, friends, family, business associates…

But all is very quiet.

Within my heart.

I heard my heart song.

The body chaperoning the mind, well, almost always.

(Oh, how sweet.)

But first my face grew tender, a smile unfolding like tendrils.

I felt the fire.

Warming my blood on a 6C night.

The wind joining in the carousing of the festivities, yet

I was awed, intoxicated by the fire of my heart.

It is all very quiet.

I became the fish

That did not get wet.

And slithered into oblivion.

I Love You

I am quite forgetful and require much reminding.

And in my life, there are many benevolent Souls who have agreed to help me remember, the truth of who I am.  Relationships are my very precious lessons of this lifetime. I have learned and learned and still have not mastered the lesson of not giving my power away when in a relationship. However, as I mature in consciousness, I am less and less inclined to allow this lovelessness to be in my life.

My will to learn has been stubborn like a bull. However much I have been completely stripped naked in selfness in a relationship, it has not made me retreat and afraid to learn more. I know the only way for me the return to true Harmony is to face myself.

Every happening in life is my own creation, those that guide me to return are co-creations with the Divine. The creations of my life recently, has pointed to nothing but the urgency to truly learn this lesson. This time, though, Moments rather than Time existed. The lining up of events and its unfolding and completion all existed within the rhythm of moments. Bang, bang, bang. Each moment counted, and the choice of each moment, completely changed the next moment and so on. And without even realizing, what has been always has dawned. The stepping in is not grand, but natural.

I have come to the point where I will not allow the lovelessness to be anymore. Not from hurt or contraction, but from opening to a point where the inner-heart floods every cell of my being, and the energy of Fire within my heart is pulsing every space within. It is impossible to perpetuate the lovelessness, simply.

And in true and deep Love, I wear a smile that if you would only feel, is embracing you in the deepest Love, that we all are. And it is with this smile, I continue to walk forward, holding my arms open to share this Love with every Soul I am to meet.

I Love You.

Meeting Femaleness

To find oneself, many times we first deny who we are.A child at 12 being innocently denied of her openness to love and to share her love, grew up embodying all the religious connotations of what it means to be proper with her body and her sex. She breathed and lived guilt with each step in life. Yet the life within her refused to be denied. The more it was repressed, the harder it wants to express. The child was too tired to fight and too scared to speak out, repeatedly her life was snuffed and her voice disappeared. She was ready to give up life. At 12, she died symbolically in a car accident, miraculously surviving with barely a scratch. It is not her time yet, there is still much to learn and share.She grew up in her teens still in conflict, confused, fighting. Her heart wants to open but her body is frozen. When her body is ready, her heart is two steps behind. She is broken, fragmented. There is no harmony. She does not feel worthy enough to take up space, she is unsure why she is here. She has misinterpreted that to be loved you need to give all that you are, and even more than you have.

Her fragility misled her to believe that to be whole we must seek completion from the outside. Yet all the searching, seeking, discovering, told her otherwise. Nothing and no one can complete us, without ourselves first realizing the fullness within.

Therefore, broken, in heart, in body, she returns within. Fragmented, she pieced the soul back together with bleeding hands. She finds that some pieces cannot be found and others will always be imperfect, but now she can feel her heart again.

The woman within her is vibrant and dynamic, strong. She is fully open and totally in femaleness to receive. She is love in stillness and compassion. In every heart beat, she continues to tread on the path, simply for her own survival. Although without much angst, the rebellion is there, silent.

With each step she walks, she also holds the hands of all the women who have been experiencing similar. She strips her roles, after being in all of them—the virgin, the whore, the dakini, the lover, the daughter, the wife, the mother, but none of them can fully express her. She rather just calls herself, a woman, an eternal symbol of the moon.

She can feel every heart of every woman. All the madness, the lack of self-love, the feeling of unworthiness, the pulsating desires, the suffocating jealousy. She may not understand, but she accepts. She cries in pain but she accepts. And this acceptance has led her where she is here now.
She will continue to walk on this path, with her arms outstretched. And in her heart, she knows the beauty, the grandiosity, the breath-taking grace and deep inner strength she feels of the female race, will be honored in much greater magnitude when we begin to see ourselves truly, face to face.

I am ready

Every time I feel alone, you are not there.

I wish to turn to someone, and you are not there.

I want to hold your hand, you are not there.

You, are not a person.

You, are the reminder to me, that all that is external is unreal.

The external does not define me, it does not enlighten me, it could not wound me, it could never complete me.

In-truth, it could not give me love, but only reflect the love I have within back to me.

On the journey, I am attached to some of you more than others. As the mirror you hold are clearer, more still, and I become deeply mesmerized. But in fact, what I am seeing in you, is what you are reflecting back to me. This only happens, when in-truth, you are still within yourself.

When you are not there in the outside reality, perhaps it is time I am to ready to see myself without any reflections anymore.

Perhaps it means, I now know who I am from the pulsating of my heart.

Perhaps, my beloved, I am ready.

Simplicity

Life is actually very simple.

Our spirit and our minds are masters in making everything much more complicated, and most of the times, we buy into it.

We create multitudes of complex situations in life due to separating from our Soul.  The pain which results in turn lead us to seek for outside solutions, which does not actually heal, but cause more pranic energy, and hence, more pain.  Deep down we may be aware that how we go through life does not solve anything, yet because of the spirit’s pride, we are unwilling to admit it or change the energy we have aligned ourselves with.

In- truth, it is unlikely that we are experiencing this for the first time.  What we have experienced in previous reincarnations will naturally feel more comfortable for us in this life, and consequently, we go through it again, unaware.  If we do not stop and make a conscious choice to experience something different, we will go through lifetime over lifetime, supporting prana; leading us further and further separated from the Soul, where unity lies.

In deep pain, some choose to ignore or avoid it.  But life is not just love and light.  We cannot cover up what is there, and hope it will go away.  It won’t.  If we don’t choose to face truth, truth will catch up with us and make us face it.  Facing truth may bring up emotions, be aware that in these moments, we may become controlled by the emotions that surface.  If this happens, it is only just another game that perpetuates prana.  It is unnecessary to immerse oneself in gatherings or meetings which support the arousal of emotions, because any situation which encourages the mass expression of any kind of emotion, is causing more pranic energy to be released into the world.

Prana, or emotions, is the root cause of all pain, and dis-eases on the planet.  It is also what the Mother Earth is desperately trying to re-harmonize herself from.

The imminent more frequent upheavals of the Mother Earth, termed as “disasters” by mankind, is a wake up call for all.  Life until now is not working for the planet.  Unless we begin to see differently, choose differently, what has been, cannot be the way forward.  Choose to connect back with your Soul.  Return back to the inner heart.

The recent earthquakes and tsunami around the planet may have brought you back into your heart.  Albeit a shattering, the heart is felt once again.  This is a beginning.  Now we know what it feels like to have a heart.  We begin to feel what is a connection to all, that what has happened to the people in another part of the world, could have easily happened to us.  Nothing is a separate or individual incident.

From the space of the heart, which still experiences emotions, gradually we return to the inner heart.  Here there is stillness.  There is Joy, Harmony and Love.  In the inner heart, there are no emotions such as elation, because to experience elation requires one to rise from somewhere low (depression) to somewhere high (elation).  But Joy is a feeling in the inner heart, it is permanent.

When we return to the inner heart, life returns to Simplicity.  And the planet will also reflect that back to us.

Photo: CK (Secret Nine Productions)

Harmony

I have a story to tell.  This could be your story too.

This particular story is about a girl who was born believing that everyone is somehow the same, in some big way.  Astrologically she is born a Virgo, hence, understanding the mechanics of things is important for her; yet for the bulk of her life she has also been blessed with a strong heart and an inherent trust in life.    This trust has brought her what is of a knowing.  Knowing is not knowledge, it also does not require proof.  Simply put, it is just the way it is.  The way is clear and the heart is still.   There is no wavering, only an arrow-pointed determination towards a goal.

Years ago she felt a knowing in Mother Nature.  She knows she is safe within the Mother.  This is not knowledge, for the girl cannot proof it.  All she knew was she had to return home, to a place where she is no longer fragmented anymore.  She knew she had to return before she can move anywhere forward.

It was such a knowing that brought her back to Nature.  The girl was with the Mother always, she does not wish to be anywhere else.  Within the Mother, there is a mutual exchange of love.  Over the years, the girl has moved many times, changed jobs, met different people;  yet she carried Mother Nature within her, everywhere she went.  The Mother is in her when she moved, danced, sang, wrote, worked; the Mother is also in her house, her body, her clothes, her food.  She breathes the Mother and the Mother flows in her blood.

In truth, the Mother is everywhere, in every cell of every person.  Never had it crossed the girl’s mind that it was considered “unconventional” to quit her job in the fashion industry to go farming, or to live in a remote island where the nearest transportation to civilization was an hours’ walk over mountains.  Sometimes she forgets that she lives in Hong Kong rather than in the deserts of Mexico or on the mountains of the Andes.

Everyone has their comfortable and habitual way of life, and this is the life of the girl.  Every day she wakes up at the crack of dawn to walk in the crisp cool air beginning the morning in communion with Pachamama.  Some mornings the exchange with the Mother is deep in harmony, other mornings there is much discordance.  Yet there is no where to hide within the Mother, only more openings.  In moments of exhaustion or emotional disturbances, instead of stagnation, the girl chooses to continue walking.  Without thinking, her two feet guide while her heart takes a rest.  During thresholds when she is close to either breaking down or turning back, the girl continues walking.  There comes a place and a time, when the exhaustion magically turns into an opening.  It transforms into harmony.

Hong Kong is an opportune land for technology and modernity, and within its financial backdrops and glamor-laced and polluted air, the girl is now at home here.  Harmony can only come from the inside.  Whether on the top of Machu Picchu or at a beach on Lamma Island, the harmony is one and the same.  Harmony is permanent, whereas peace is momentary.  If Hong Kong is the place where she is to be presently for learning and for service, this is where she will be.  And she feels the love of the Mother as immensely here as when she is breathing thin air, hugging the sun and the sky in Peru.

This is what the girl feels life is about, to be who she is from the depths of her heart, knowing that she is in unity, no matter where she is and how each day presents itself.  Honoring her body and be grateful for its ability to sense and reflect both what is happening within and without energetically–individually, universally and collectively.  Allowing herself time for solitude yet also be in union and communion with Mother Nature and all its beings.

The girl knows.  She knows this is all a time of preparation and arduous training; she only smiles because honestly she is enjoying every moment of it, and this is all that matters to her.

Photo: Wini