Personal growth, random musings

Personal growth

The key to growth is to know yourself. To be able to see yourself in a no-holds-barred kind of way. To see how you react in certain situations so that you can maneuver to a better place. You can figure out what to do should a distressing situation arise again.

It’s quite scientific actually. First you need a goal. Where do you want to be. Not do. Be. What kind of space would you like your spirit to live in.

My aspiration is to be totally connected all the time. Connected? What’s that? To live in constant awareness of the higher forces that abound and to let them guide me. To be able to function at that level.

Well, one can always dream and aspire for something great. Aim for the moon, the stars....mankind eventually did reach the moon... so we dream. That’s my dream. My goal.

I sometimes feel it, especially when I am with communities. I get on a high. I really like helping people. I get a thrill from seeing things come up.

My biggest challenge is keeping my cool. I don’t like injustice. I don’t like it when people suffer needlessly. I don’t like bullies and manipulation.

Nature

I have a great passion for the environment. For me, nature carries divine energies. Nature can give you what money cannot buy. It can give you solace. Its energy can give you joy. It is expansive. It is healing. It is quite sad that in the economic scheme of things, it is not valued like material things when in fact nature more than any other aspect of life is the main contributor to the well-being of the human being. Even in the realm of economy, having reverence for the environment yields much more benefit and it’s sustainable.

In terms of understanding oneself, nature can function like a cocoon, which can hold you while you rest, or walk, or reflect. My house is octagonal. I have a garden on every floor. I even have plants surrounding my bedroom. I hardly have any walls. When the 18-hole golf course was changed to a nine hole golf course and many houses mushroomed I increased the foliage in which I lived.

Dr. Aldrin Mallari, country director of Flora and Fauna International, once told me, “One day I will bring you to an old growth forest. It’s like a cathedral.” He tried to let me feel his awe. I have been to the outskirts of an old growth forest. And the energy is dynamic and eclectic. There are different insects flying around and different species of plants. There are sounds. There is abundance of life. To compare I went to the La Mesa Watershed and I could understand what many have been telling me. A manmade forest is quiet. In La Mesa the trees are planted in a line. All the species are chosen by our foresters. I love the La Mesa Watershed and I take pride in what our foresters have done. But it is very, very different from the dynamism of a virgin forest. I have yet to go to the nuclei of an old growth forest and experience the cathedral. I can still remember Aldrin talking to me and the image that flashed to me was of light streaming through the trees — me in the middle basking in the glory of Nature... feeling God.

When I went to Compostela Valley I went to Mainit National Park. I was invited by a group that wanted me to see the bio diversity there. I was unprepared for what I would see. I went to a mountain with 32 caves! I went in one of them and knew that the “gold of the caves” was an even greater gold than what they dug for under the ground. I was saddened to see gushing rivers that had turned brown. I was overwhelmed to see the hot springs that abounded. Hot springs everywhere! Seeming miles of hot springs. I’d never seen anything like it before. My hosts told me of the time of their youth when they would swim where the hot springs met the cool waters of the river. It was warm. They could choose between the warmth of the mix or the invigorating coolness of the river. They showed me pictures of magnificent waterfalls higher up.

During my talk in the school I said, “You look for gold under. Gold can be found in many places of the world. But what you have here can be found only here. It is a greater gold than you can imagine.”

Dreams... Aspirations…

Like my dreams for myself, I dream and hope for the country. For the day when we can regain the paradise we once had. I dream of the day when our people will no longer be poor neither in material needs nor in spirit. I aspire for an era when the pillar of Truth and the Common Good shall rule our country and our people’s hearts.

In an environment like this, our spirits will be able to fly. We will have the environment where we can “feel” ourselves — free from the chaos that greed and selfishness bring.

Let me clarify. I don’t think in boxes. There is no box. No black or white. No one is all good, nor is anyone all bad. Within everyone there is the possibility of great goodness, and even with the most holy saint there are demons that lurk in the background.

The need is to see. Awareness is everything. The need is to have aspirations. For ourselves. For our country. Then to be aware of where we are at — in terms of our personal growth — and in terms of the world we live in. Then we navigate with hope in our hearts.

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I can be reached at regina_lopez@abs-cbn.com.