Honoring Souls

Today I want to hold my child and rock him perpetually.  I want to tell him it is all ok.  I want to hug him to let him know no matter what happens he is protected.  That being who he is, is sometimes not always comfortable for those who is not yet in the livingness.

I also want to tell myself the same.

Today the sky has begun to shed its heavy tears since we began walking to school in the morning.  My child has been impatient and irritable with being wet.  He sulked the entire way while I walked ahead, attempting to master my non-interference and non-absorption skills.  I didn’t numb his mumbling with my headphones and continued to enjoy the crisp coolness of the rain.

To be honest, we do look forward to our afternoon sampan ride home.  Since the beginning of the year, I have decided to spend an extra half month’s rent to get my child a sampan ride after school, so he only walks a single one hour walk each day, while I enjoy my three. We have hired a very wonderful sampan driver, who drives us home each day.  He is very dependable and a genuinely nice guy.  On this half hour ride home, my son loves his time on the sea.  You can see with the water, the sky and the openness of the atmosphere and of the heart, he is in his true element.

It is rare, almost never, that he sits still inside the sampan.  Even when it is pouring outside, he will be in the open part of the little boat.  Prancing and dancing around,  singing and whistling his joy.  Sometimes I join him on the bow of the boat, to let the wind kiss me passionately, while my hair fly free in all directions.  My heart grows bigger and bigger while exchanging with all forms of nature, and the smile on my face glistens.

Yesterday, our sampan driver couldn’t make it to pick us up, and instead his wife came to drive us.  She is also a very kind lady, but more anxious than her husband.  Coincidentally, the child was experiencing a desperate cry of boredom yesterday from avoiding his soul.  He was more than the usual restless.  On the sampan, he began experimenting with more and eventually sat himself on the side of the boat, performing gymnastics with one leg.  As his mother, I know he is safe.  I can see his soul is trying to express, adamantly.  Yet I can also see the growing anxiety of the lady driver.  So I asked him to temporarily stop doing whatever he was experimenting with.  However I politely asked, humorously cajoled, seriously disciplined, he refused to come in.  The lady driver began to get really anxious and eventually I had to playfully smack his behind to break the impending heaviness.

Before he went to bed last night, we had a little chat about being true to who our soul is.  If we attempt to distract ourselves from who we are meant to be, there is always going to be a constant, nagging sense of dissatisfaction with our lives.  Personally  I have gone through years of ignoring the truth of who I am, running, hiding, doing everything I could to remain inconspicuous.  Never was I told as a child, that the entirety of life could easily be spent in dishonoring who we are, it is what most of the world is experiencing without knowing.  And the moment when I realized this is what I have spent the first quarter of my life being, I was overwhelmed by immense suffering, as if a dagger is slowly being dragged through every crevice between bone and flesh, torturing without the ability to wish for death.  I never wish my son would have to go through what I did.

When we embarked on our sampan ride after school this afternoon, the first thing the driver greeted us with was that it would be best if we found ourselves someone else to drive us when the new school term begins.

There is danger, and there is fear.  As the guardian of my child, when there is danger, there is a radar within me that will automatically scream, even when we are not physically together.  Then there is anxiety and fear, which are emotions.  Emotions are re-interpretation of certain feelings, they are not truth.  To not be in the grasp of fear, is not pretending invincibility, but to truly be in the heart in trust of the miracle of life.  And it is this innate trust in the wonder of God and of life, that my child have been blessed, and I learned after years of distrust.

For one moment, my heart sank.  We may not be living as the majority do, yet that does not justify the fact that we have to be alienated.  Every moment is a constant awareness in livingness of the heart.  We are here to wake up hearts and yes it may cause discomfort to some and increase the possibility of questioning, but this is who we are, being truthful to our souls.  And because this involves a child, humanity feels they can thus speak out even vehemently, from a self-righteous and linear sight of hierarchy.  And being a parent of such a child, my heart knows he came to me because I have no wish to imprison him within any such societal or mind-induced ideals.

Hugging my child, I told him the wish of the driver.  He felt it immediately and went to a corner in solitude.  I hugged him again and told him, child, we are survivors.  We always have been.  We have to survive to share what we came here to.  Even if it takes lifetimes of patience and aeons of compassion.  Only by honoring who we are as souls, will we complete this life in presence and shining brilliance.

And we have to do this no matter what it takes.  Because when we can, others also may.

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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