Can we be both foolish and arrogant?

So it’s over. Ten days of what I felt was an intense, subtle body workout. Back in the “world.” I had 989 unread emails — whew. The key is to be able to bring back with me the “jewels” gained from the intensive retreat and not let it get sucked up by the chaos and stress of daily living, and a work schedule that is compacted, to say the least.

This usually is the challenge of spiritual life. Even from the Cursillo days when one would have intense spiritual experiences and then go back to daily life, to the grind of it all and eventually begin to wonder, what happened to that?

So here I am faced with a similar scenario where I felt a lot, learned a lot and would not like it to become a situation where all of that is subsumed by “the world.”

What needs to happen and what seems to have happened for me is that the experience — the “change” — has been deep enough to be “structural.” Whatever happened was not just an “experience” but in essence a “fortifying” of the whole subtle body makeup. It’s feeling like a person “reborn.” I feel different. I have and am continuing to discover an energetic part of myself I can rest on, a dimension of myself that feels calmer and remains unassailed, no matter the circumstance. It feels different.

Hmmm… I am no saint, though, and unfortunately I am still forgetting things (like the house keys — gulp!) but I feel much calmer inside. I am seeing things I didn’t see before. For example I am now with my sons — looking at colleges he has been accepted to — so he can choose where he wants to study.

I grew up in a physically affectionate family. My dad was very cariñoso. So it has been frustrating for me that my sons are not like that. There have been times that I wished I could have at least had one girl to hug!

But yesterday, walking around a college in Los Angeles, I felt my sons and understood it from another angle. It was a moment of vision.

What I “saw” or “felt” was it is an “independence” thing. The need to “be” and I saw strength and even integrity in it – a surge of pride surfaced... and I felt, “Wow my kids are cool!” Its’ not that they don’t love me. They just want to BE

I was seeing things from a different part of me. Not the part that wants affection, but a part that just sees. It wasn’t an intellectual shift. It was perception from improved, intuitive insight.

It’s how we see things that can bring us pain.

Samuel, my meditation teacher, said something that made an impact on me. He said, “We are essentially ‘spirit beings.’ We just ended up getting stuck in physical bodies. And worse than that is thinking that this is all we are: matter.”

Literally, I feel a freedom in this process of exploring my “higher me.” Like “I am free to be.” Maybe this is why one of my favorite songs is I Believe I Can Fly.

A very beautiful experience I had towards the end of the intensive was that of massive forces that are there for the Philippines. It felt like a pillar of force and power and compassion that was for the country. Tears flowed profusely as I felt their love.

We have such a beautiful country and such beautiful people. I am honored to have been born in this special piece of what can be paradise on earth.

One night as I sorted through all the email, I looked at Yahoo news and felt:

Oh, dear. The top 10 news stories ranged from killings in Syria to the horrific crash of a Lufthansa airliner, and I felt the torrents of negative and material forces that are flowing through the planet and through the consciousness of people today. Is there hope?

Yes! Because I have just come from a retreat where lights have shone, and angelic beings have descended. This may not have made the news, but it did happen. In a chat with my mother she mentioned more and more people are turning to spirituality in the real sense. Going beyond the rituals and externals into what goes on inside.

Before I went on retreat I attended a Natural Convention in Anaheim, Los Angeles with 5,000 booths and 70,000 people attending. Unreal. The three days I spent there was not even enough time to cover the breadth and depth of what was being offered. But I felt this burgeoning consciousness for health and wellness — and it inspired me. Everywhere the banner of non- GMO was touted as a marketing stand — no chemicals, only organic and natural. The market continues to expand by leaps and bounds.

As I went around I met lovely people. Yes, it was about business, but it was also about something better — aligned with principles of human welfare.

And so goes life: forces of good, forces of evil. And forces in between. And then there is us — humanity — faced with the challenge of navigating our way through. Like Samuel says, “Free will comes with awakening.” Otherwise we are just puppets that get pulled about according to the predominant currents of the time, coupled with the influences of our life circumstances. If we have “awakened” we can see and we can then choose which way to go. The best path will always be that which is aligned with truth and light.

During the new moon, on my way home to my cottage I looked at the starlit sky and marveled at its grandeur. We never see this in Manila because the city is so polluted. Actually, I haven’t seen stars like this in the Philippines.

Every inch of the vast sky was covered with different colors: white, orange, red, yellow and blue. More than the magnificence of the sight was the feeling of life beyond.

Can we be foolish and arrogant enough to think that we are the only life that exists? I felt the flow of life; and, tired, I fell into a deep sleep.

We move forward. Life is good. We find ourselves and we continue to “build ourselves.”

We will be having a two-day workshop on meditation from May 23 to 24. This is a process of learning how to still the mind and build structure. After that there will be a seven-day retreat from May 25 to 31 wherein we will learn to use these intuitive skills to clear our subconscious. This is the stride towards real “freedom” — freedom from the shackles within. It will be held in Holy Spirit Mission Service Center, Arnoldus Road, Maitim 2nd East, Tagaytay City.

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For those interested, call Sarah Bulan at 0917-8247628 or 415-2272 local 3791 or email: SarahJane_Bulan@abs-cbn.com.

You can also email me at regina_lopez@abs-cbn.com.

The techniques work. They have worked and continue to work for me in a dynamic way. Hope to see you there.