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.

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Until next time

I carried a rock with me the first time I went to Machu Picchu, Peru, the trip I took five years ago that changed my life.

Five years ago Machu Picchu was very different from today. One afternoon, I slept with this rock on the high pastures of this ancient Incan ruin. I dreamt while I slept, woke up with tears streaming down my face, and from that moment on, I lived this dream in waking reality.

A few weeks ago, this rock which has always been guarding my altar called me. When I looked at it, it has split into two. What has been one is now two.
In essence we are always one, but for service, now is the time to geographically and physically separate to share who we are individually.

In-truth, Love cannot ever diminish. And in my love, go forth wherever you are called, whoever you have to be with, for this dream to be lived. Until next time, beloved.

Grace

Have we ever wondered what is true healing or true change?

And why we have kept improving on ourselves and the process does not end?

In-truth, we are repeating over and over again ourselves, life time over life time.

What we are missing is a true difference.

 

The difference is the consciousness.

The consciousness in choosing to align to a different energy this time.

There are only two energies in existence, fire and prana.

And prana is what separates humanity and is that which most have aligned to.

Prana is what the human spirit exalts. The spirit is a fragment of God, and has chosen to not express God but itself. Therefore it has the essence of God, but it is separate from God, which is Soul.

 

How many of us have been taught or made known the difference between Soul and spirit?

How many teachers actually know the difference themselves?

Prana, takes us away from the inner-most.

It teaches us to look outside of ourselves for the change.

It has made glamor, maya and illusion look like they are almost natural in life.

We look for the leader, the guru, the spiritual practice, the diet, the miracle foods, the lifestyle, the healing modality, the alternative medicine, the workout, the skincare, the fashion, the luxury, we seek everything in the external, with the hope that they might save or improve us, but that which is within us.

 

That which is within us, is fire.

It is the breath of our inner-hearts.

Fire is the reminder that we as Souls began as unity.

This is the yearning that more and more of us know and remember, it has become unbearable to not return to unity anymore.

Within our inner-hearts, there is only truth.

 

There will be many who will imitate this truth.

They will come very close and echo many similarities to the truth.

But in-truth are still breathed by prana.

We are equal in Soul with these brothers and sisters.

The only difference is a choice of what energy we align with.

 

We could only understand livingness if we become livingness.

Just as we could only understand unity if we cease to align with separation.

Without first acknowledging that it is our own spirit which has caused us separation and that we are indeed empty, there could not be real change.

It is the pride of spirit, which prevents us from experiencing the real difference.

And spirit will not go gently into the goodnight, it will try everything to prevent us from seeing that IT is the cause of separation.

 

But love will bring us home.

In the stillness of the heart, we will feel her impulses, we will begin to feel truth.

The love of oneself is the listening of every murmur in our inner-hearts, and walking with it.

Do not be fooled by glamor, self-love has nothing to do with rewarding ourselves with more that comes from the outside.

Do not be fooled by maya, living by the reactions of emotions is not love.

Do not be fooled by illusion, believing we are somehow unequal to others is first a separation of oneself within, and not love.

 

Love is the stillness within.

There is no emotion in love.

Love is not anything we think it is or have been taught that it is.

It is never too late to discover the true face of love.

For love will bring us home to our inner-hearts.

Where we will meet grace.

 

 

 

 

 

Re-integration–journal of the heart

Physically, I am now in Puno, Peru.  Puno is a very special place for me.  It is where Lake Titicaca is situated, the energy here propels me to be clear about my feelings.  The Lake is like a mirror for me, there is no hiding or avoiding when I am in Puno.  This time I am in Puno alone, I have a lot of time to be on my own, to feel and to feel some more.
I have probably experienced the deepest of what love is, here in Puno.  And I continue to.  When I mention love, it is not only physical love that I refer to.  I have experienced in both physical and non-physical ways, that of divine love here.  It is a connecting web of unity of colors so incredible that I can only describe myself as being completely blown away.  In this experience, I know what it is to cry and laugh at the same time when one is utterly touched to the core.  As esoteric as it sounds, I not only saw but I have touched this connecting web with all beings in existence.  Unity is very real for me.

In our third dimensional experience, we were born to learn and perpetuate separation.  We have a nationality, we have a blood family, we have a religion.  We have a a tribe of friends, a close partner or spouse, a community of some sort.  We pledge our sovereignty or devotion to something, and on the other hand, we reject those who do not belong.  If we stop being friends with someone, we have to reject that person, whether it be out of disinterest or fear of being hurt.

But separation as much as it is innate in our lives, is purely a fictitious phenomenon, when one has seen and touched what is connecting us all.  We are connected, no matter how separative our actions tend to be in this reality.  Unity, has been misinterpreted as grouping together like-mindedness in the external reality to support a certain idea.  Yet when different groups have different mentalities, how is true oneness going to prevail?  The truth is, unity has been there to begin with.  And it is with our soul’s recognition that we are all one already, then this natural progression of honoring this connection within, will lead to actions which are truly unified.

In-truth, we do not require physical proximity to be connected.  Even the greatest love can be experienced the same, despite time and space differences.  Only as human beings, we doubt.  If only we could trust in the fullness of unity, then we could choose according to our preferences in relationships.  We could choose to enjoy close physical contact with another.  We could choose conscious monogamy.  We could choose conscious polygamy.  Or not.  However we choose, we are connected.  When we no longer exist in the consciousness of separation, none of our choices will separate us.  And we choose for ourselves solely, while honoring fully the choices of others.

Re-integration could be a physical coming together of people.  It could also be a strengthening of our hearts, in knowing that true unity cannot suffer with distance nor time.

First Love, One Love

If there is one thing I learned from the Universe, it is to listen to its murmurs and see the significance.

I had an inseparable friend in college, we met in the year when I listened to my heart and made a decision to switch my science major to an all arts degree, majoring in Chinese Studies. If you have ever met anyone in life for the first time, and knew you were destined to be best friends, you will understand  the connection between Yen and I.  She was definitely the yang, and I, the yin, when we met.  We loved the same things, especially pretty things like fashion, we were in the same classes, our favorite was the study of Chuang Tzu.  We partied together, got drunk on Sex on the Beach, we danced and danced at night and fully immersed ourselves in our Chinese Philosophy studies by day.  We were intensely in each other’s lives for one year. Then I moved to Vancouver from Toronto,  but our friendship ended before my departure.  It broke down during the final semester of our third year in college.  When I felt I finally discovered a friend, as much as I was heartbroken and lost from losing our connection, I had to continue alone.

I met several spiritual mentors during the time my soul was desperately seeking wholeness after a long period of not loving myself.  Under their facilitation and guidance, for the first time in my life, I felt who was the truth of myself, had a chance to emerge.  I was so ready to dive into all dimensions and the darkest depths.  I looked upon these mentors like family, brothers and sisters and wished we could be close.  Yet soon enough, all of them, moved away from where I lived.  Once again, just when I preciously discovered support, I found myself alone again.

I grew up in a religious family and an orthodox Christian all girls school.  I did not end up being a Christian nor a finance analyst, doctor, accountant or lawyer.  Because I choose to believe that an all loving-God would never allow only a selected few to enter his kingdom, and I treasure the freedom that existed beyond the imagination of authority.  Choosing as such, I relinquished the opportunity to walk into a room and feel a part of one.  For most of my life, I could only feel the one, as single, solitary.

I could choose to brush aside these experiences as the harshness of growing up which everyone somehow experience one way or another.  Or I could acknowledge the deep heart break that they have allowed me to feel.  Feeling as deeply as I could possible, the vision clears as the lesson arises from my blurred tears.

I have come to this life knowing there is another awaiting me, who understands and accepts me as much as I love myself .  I have known with my first breath that what can be created in union is unimaginable in the scope of one.  Yet time and time again, I have been shown there is yet a first step.  I have to first know how to love myself and experience the immense magnitude of this first love.  A union can only be true, when it is utmost harmony experienced with one and in togetherness.  Unity can only arise from a union that is true.

We are our own masters.  We are our best friends.  We are our greatest support.  We are one with ourselves before any union with another is possible.  And this union will open into what is of a true tribe, one that does not exclude, a people that gravitate together not because of emptiness or co-dependency, but because of a collaboration that is collective, one such that builds for one and all.  From the first love of oneself, we open and blossom into one love for all.

Home is within the Heart

This Solstice we are bringing home all that we have felt wounded in our lives or lives past.

I grew up in a family structure that belonged to a greater structure, the church.  The church was our overseeing family, yet within my immediate blood relations family, we were less tight knit.  My parents were not close with most of their brothers and sisters, we rarely celebrated any chinese family traditions, and if it were not an occasion related to the church, we rarely celebrated at all.

Chinese families are big on traditional family celebrations.  Yet I only celebrated my first Winter Solstice family dinner when I was in my twenties, far away from home in Canada, without my family, but with friends I studied with at the time.  Later when I returned to Hong Kong from Canada, every Winter Solstice when my working friends had to go home for an early family dinner, I didn’t know where to go or who to eat with.

I did not grow up bearing strong connections with my culture or with Family in general.  And when I made a conscious decision to leave the church when I was twenty, by default on an energetic level, I have made a decision to leave my family.  Like most things in my life, this was not a logical decision, I could only follow my heart.  I cannot even begin to describe the years that followed.  The immense feeling of being orphaned and of not belonging to anywhere, anyone, anything.  The deep loneliness that resulted from a decision of my choice.  I knew I could not go back, yet, I was also too pained to go forward.  At twenty years old, I began the path of truly returning.

If I had to be true to my heart, to listen to my soul, and experience the deepest loneliness, could I do it?  Would I do it?  Yet my heart still told me, there is no other way if you wish to be true.  So I ventured into the world, without the care I had experienced growing up, alone.  Initially, there were many moments when I rejected that care consciously, because of the pain within me.  But also because I really wanted to learn to do it on my own.  For years and years, I fought.  I fought that demon within my soul.  That demon that told me I had no family, that I was all alone in this world.

The harder I fought, the more I wanted my own family.  And that did not come easily either.  To wish to create a family outside the system, the existing structures, yet to have it be strong and resilient enough to be sustained, was almost impossible.  Yet I could not walk on another path.  It felt like the greatest impossibility, but I had no other path to tread on, I could only keep walking.

For years I felt I was not understood nor respected for choosing for myself, I felt if I did not agree to stay in the church, I had no place or belonging in the world.  I felt I didn’t deserve, because I chose different.  I felt because I honored my soul, I was ostracized, and I didn’t understand.  And every time when I wanted to numb this deep pain, I created a situation for myself that only temporarily soothed this wound, but soon enough will present itself as a clear mirror to reflect even more so the rawness of my pain.

I do not wish to and frankly, cannot keep repeating this pain.  Opening up the wound long enough to feel the hurt and trying to cover it up only to cause it to fester even more.  I wish to live, I wish so much to live, and to do so I had to face my pain in all its ugliness and terror.  I began to come back to myself, with full acceptance, of myself and of every choice I had made.  I began to dissolve the battle within myself of listening to my heart and not so of man.  I began to truly honor the precious opportunity to be alone, which is not being lonely, but being full of my soul.

I also began to come back to acceptance of all those around me.  My family, my friends, the church, everything.  Being different, choosing different, does not mean we are separate.  I was brought up in this unique situation, because my parents probably experienced similar.  And without being in this environment, I would not feel so deeply what it means to be connected, nor would I dive to such depths to explore and discover what unity truly is.  What I have learned is the unspoken strength of aloneness, not to mention the immense beauty it serves in one’s life.  I cannot describe more unless it is also experienced by another.

I am still human.  Every time I feel the physical warmth of someone else’s family, I cannot help but wear a smile, yet it also touches on the residual pain within my heart, and tears of longing, of belonging, wants to fall.  In this Solstice, unconsciously planned, though non coincidental, my parents are physically on a trip to Vietnam.  And in-truth, it is the most perfect opportunity for me to surround and wrap myself in all the emotions of insufficiency, so that I will see so clearly, these emotions are only my judgments.

Without a strong personal bond of family and culture, what it has gifted me also is the ability to feel the bonds within the heart beyond that of family, culture and religion.  And the connection within the heart, similar to my life, is all illogical.  But it is truth.  And it is strongest and eternal unlike that of a physical bond.  For most of my life, what I thought I lacked, have in-truth allowed me to receive what is the most ever-lasting.  And on this day of the Solstice, where the North and the South come together in unity,  it is the home within the heart, that I know I will always have a place to return to and forever reside in.

Unification

it is imperative that we see what is going on yet everyone has to see this in their own time and with their own open hearts nothing can be forced upon when the time is not an air of intense change pushing from the earth deep from the core of consciousness is yearning to emerge it feels explosive on the verge of immense purging of all that is not aligning with the energy of the heart the resistance the doubt the numbing and ignorance is resulting in a dull heaviness felt in the bones in the body the head spinning vision blurred the head heavy the body aching the heart tight we fight we fight to resistant to be who we are the mind spins ingenious tales and humanity has bought into this form of control for aeons and aeons but now we are waking up we are not content to be living in a bubble of illusion anymore we have had enough of separation fed into us we simply cannot bear to be separate anymore yet we discover we have never been separate we couldn’t have been and with the willingness to return to the impulses of our hearts we begin a journey of unification which could be long or a lot quicker if more of us are waking up to this and would take the responsibility of being nothing less than the truth of who we are it is imminent that humanity and the planet return to unification it could only be as this is how we began as may this be your truth also when the moment comes

photo: CK (Secret Nine Productions)

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)

Choose Fire

Can you imagine how it would be like if nothing ever changes?

And can you imagine how it would be like if everything changes in a split second?

In the experience of life we have probably chosen somewhere in between.  Generally speaking there are two types of conscious changes that happen for those who wish to be aware of them.

The first type of change is a desire to improve on something,  because we feel there is a lack within us, in desperation, we search for something outside of ourselves to fix what we feel is lacking, be it health, relationships, career etc.  We need to feel good again, feel young again, feel vitality again,  feel whole again, but we don’t know how or why.  Therefore, we try from yoga to shopping therapy; veganism to guru-worshipping; drug and alcohol dependence to religion devotion, everything we can lay our hands on in the external world.  Desperately, we search and grasp, still without knowing what it is that is causing the deep agony we wish to distract ourselves from.  This type of change is such that causes and accumulates more prana in one’s life, in other words, it is the desperate fight that spirit puts up before going into the good night.

The second type of change is when the utter agony caused by the first type of change  (or no change at all) is too much to bear any longer.  Then there is no other choice, but to return inward, back towards oneself.  This is sometimes presented as a wake up call–when something in life changes dramatically such as an outbreak of  illness, relationship breakdowns, accidents etc.  When we consciously return, we know there is no where to go and nothing to improve.  When we realize we are whole and in unity with all by returning to our SOULS, the search ends and life begins.

Life is a returning.  Going back within, into our inner hearts, is not an abstract or elusive thing.  It is walking waking life, each moment, with our inner hearts.  It is not keeping this knowledge in our minds, and still go through life numbing ourselves with all kinds of distraction such as compulsive working and studying, television, movies, alcohol, drugs, sex, food, facebook, even meditation with an inappropriate intent, and the list goes on.  It is dealing with life, every moment as it comes.  When we begin to see and act through our inner hearts, life becomes an experience of GRACE.  The inner struggles, fighting and disharmony dissolve, and we begin to breathe and live FIRE rather than prana.

This is the beginning of glory in one’s life.  And this moment, everything changes, truly, in a blink of an eye.

Dreams

Dreams are like a pair of strong arms that wrap around your body when in need of a hug, they bring you back.

Dreams can take one far, but they also ground one here, because dreams are to be experienced, to be lived.  And the way to the livingness of our dreams, is to be able to go beyond only dreaming.  Without dreams, life could be like an unpleasant hostel, where one can’t wait to check out from.  When one dreams, each moment we return, to be here.

Life itself is one long dream.  Every moment of this dream, there is deep yearning to live what is being dreamed.  At four years old, my dream revolved around the question of love.

To return to where we all began from, this dream has to be lived, this life has to be walked.  Love has to be experienced, so does all that is non-love.  Love in all its faces, degradations, illusions, misinterpretations, truths and non-truths have to be tasted.

Emotions surrounding love, however grandiose, or subtle; breathtakingly potent, or unbearable; each minute sentiment and feeling etched and lived…forgotten perhaps never, yet they begin to lose their grip.  Because the heart is tired and it refuses to be in the agony of separation any longer.  The heart thank all emotions, whether belonging to oneself or not, that has once impressed upon the body.  Truthfully in gratitude, for that in itself is living what it is to be human.

The dream continues, the livingness of being human ultimately is to return.  When emotions are lived and honored, they choose another body to host.  If you are ready to begin to truly live, there is only one place to return to, the unity of our soul.  Herein no questions are relevant or necessary.  Love, joy and harmony are the only states that pervade in eternity, and  they are nothing we know them as in this human experience.  This is when we begin to walk with our hearts,  so the dream is truly dreamed and lived to its fullest.

 

photo:www.jonejone.com