ALL I NEED IS A LITTLE MORE AWARENESS AND COURAGE TO TRANSFORM MY WOUNDEDNESS INTO WHOLESOMENESS.
Sometimes I just wonder where do the disorders come from? Whenever you see an addict whether it is related to drugs or sex or gambling, you can often trace a tragic history of a child being raised in a troubled family where there was an absence of consistent support, affirmation and validation- which are absolutely vital for children…
The legacy of living in these troubled families is fear, shame and abandonment. Children who are abandoned will often experience a host of problems that manifest themselves in physical, mental, emotional or spiritual pain.
One of the ways people attempt to control their pain is through rage. Rage is a holding tank for wounded people with accumulated fears, anger, resentment, humiliation and shame. Rage is a false way of garnering power for people who live with powerlessness, and rage tends to keep other people at a distance. That protects them and prevents us from seeing who they really are. Who they are may be very pain-filled, wounded persons.
When you come from a history of fear and shame, you develop survival coping skills. One of the ways is to present to the world a false front by wearing a mask that projects the image that says “I am okay and I am doing just fine”… despite the physical abuse or the addiction.
The goal of recovery is to be able to live in the `here and now’ without the past dictating who we are and how we make our decisions. It is like living life with the inner negative script that constantly reminds you of your woundedness. Living here and now will offer you a choice of a fresh start and a new beginning. Recovery is not changing who we are but `letting go’ of what we are not. You may not realize that who you are is just wonderful because that is the authentic template that God has imprinted on your soul when He created you. It is the layers of negative habitual thoughts, words and actions that you have accumulated when you stumbled through life with mistakes, pain, and shame that have resulted in self-hate and self-rejection.
The four steps to freedom from your disorders are the awareness to explore your past with an honest eye; connecting the past and the present; challenging your internal beliefs and negative mind-chatters; and learning new doable skills for managing your disorders. You have to see clearly where the past is impacting you today because that tells you where you need to challenge your old false beliefs.
You need to find the courage within to change yourself. The rewards of change are a transformation from self-doubt to celebrating yourself and your uniqueness, a sense of security of knowing that God loves you unconditionally, and that God accepts your humaneness and your woundedness.
When it comes to change, you have to take risks. You have to take risks to be able to experience recovery. To embark on a course of change takes courage. You have to find that courage within yourself because no other person can give you that courage. It is there. What you need is to tap on your inner courage to change.
Recovery is about taking little steps. You don’t experience recovery because you have been sober for years. You experience recovery on a daily basis with all those little acts of courage that you summon up along the way. Recovery is a spiritual process. You have to ask yourself to let go of the controlling mechanisms of your pain and have faith in something outside yourself. You don’t experience life in a spiritual way by continuing to `hold on’, manage, and control pain and shame. Spirituality means having faith in a power outside of yourself; but that power also resides within. It is a Higher Power. It is God. Making connection with the Higher Power brings about a sense of peace or serenity. The awareness of God’s unconditional love gives you the confidence to go on in the midst of utter gloom and doom. The acceptance of God’s love opens the floodgate to God’s healing graces into your wounded soul. You are always on the continuum of recovery. You have the freedom to choose `to let go’ or `to hold’ onto your disorders.
Submitted by David YKK
SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS BY TWO CLASSICAL AUTHORS ON GOD’S HEALING GRACE & SPIRITUALITY OF IMPERFECTION
`I’ve spent a large part of my life trying to be “good”. Suffering from what I call the `Good-Girl Complex or Perfectionism’. I see so many people that are ultimately locked up inside, for fear of making a `bad’ mistake, or looking like a bad person…So it is not really about owning your goodness, it is about disowning your badness. When we disengage from a part of ourselves, we’re doing ourselves a great disservice.’ (Kammie, life coach)
Yes the great effort that good people invested in trying to be `good’ has often resulted in reaping a `wounded self-esteem’ when they fail to measure up to their own ideals. One such person is the great Russian 19th-century author, Leo Tolstoy, whose books have become classics. From Tolstoy, we can learn a deep respect of God’s inflexible absolute standards of perfection. These ethical ideals that were elaborated by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount had put tremendous pressure on Tolstoy to be good and attracted him like a flame. But his failure to live up to those ideals ultimately consumed him like the moth destroying itself in the flame. Tolstoy tried to follow the Sermon on the Mount literally in his quest for holiness. In one significant instance, after reading Jesus’ command to the rich young man to give away everything, Tolstoy decided to free his serfs, give away his copyrights, and sell his vast estate. Subsequently, he wore peasant clothes, made his own shoes, and began working in the fields. In the face of rapidly-disappearing financial security, his wife protested strongly until Tolstoy made some concessions to set aside sufficient assets for his family. In his attempt to achieve goodness and perfection, he kept devising new lists of rules such as giving up smoking, hunting, drinking and meat. He also created new rules for developing the emotional will and eliminating base instincts. But Tolstoy could never achieve the self-discipline necessary to keep the rules. More than once, he even took a public vow of chastity and asked for separate bedrooms. However, he could never keep the vow for long and much to his shame, his wife, Sonia, had 16 pregnancies to broadcast to the world to proclaim of Tolstoy’s failure in becoming chaste. His diaries reveal many struggles between Tolstoy and his family and more importantly, many more between Tolstoy and himself. As a result, Tolstoy suffered from a deeply wounded self-esteem because of his failure to live up to his ideal based on the Sermon on the Mount. His scheme for self-improvement all foundered. In the end, Tolstoy fled from his fame, his family, his estate, his identity and died like a vagrant in a rural railway station. In spite of his apparent failure in life, Tolstoy told his critics `Don’t judge God’s holy ideals by my inability to meet them. Don’t judge Christ by those of us who imperfectly bear his name.’ At the end of his life, Tolstoy concluded, “Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather than the path I follow and which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side! If it is not the right way, then show me another way; but if I stagger and lose the way, you must help me, you must keep me on the true path, just as I am ready to support you. Do not misled me, do not be glad that I have got lost, do not shout out joyfully: `Look at him! He said he was going home, but there he is crawling into a bog!’ No, do not gloat, but give me your help and support.”
In the words of Philip Yancey, “I feel sad as I read Tolstoy’s religious writings. The X-ray vision into the human heart that made him a great novelist also made him a tortured Christian. Like a spawning salmon, he fought upstream all his life, in the end collapsing from moral exhaustion… Yet I also feel grateful to Tolstoy for his relentless pursuit of authentic faith has made an indelible impression upon me… The churches I grew up in contained too many frauds, or at least that is how I saw it in the arrogance of youth. When I observed the huge gap between the ideals of the gospel and the flaws of its followers, I was sorely tempted to abandon those ideals as hopelessly unattainable.”
Luckily for Philip Yancey, the author of `The Jesus I Never Knew’, he came across another famous Russian author, Dostoevsky. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were opposites in every way. Where Tolstoy wrote bright sunny novels, Dostoevsky focused on dark, gloomy and brooding ones that were shaped and influenced by his life experiences. When he was young, he was arrested for belonging to a group that was considered treasonous by the Tsar Nicholas I. In order to impress upon the young radicals the seriousness of their errors, the Russian emperor sentenced them to death and staged a mock execution. The blindfolded conspirators were attired in white death gowns and led to a public square to face a firing squat. At the very last moment, as the order `Ready, aim!’ was heard and rifles were cocked, a horseman galloped up with a pre-arranged message from the emperor that he would mercifully downgrade their death sentence and commute it to hard labour. Dostoevsky never recovered from that terrible experience in which he had peered into the jaw of death and came out alive. As he boarded the convict train, a devout woman handed him a New Testament, the only book allowed in prison. Believing that God had given him a second chance to fulfill his calling, Dostoevsky pored over the New Testament during his confinement. After ten years in confinement, he was convinced that “If anyone proved to me that Christ was outside the truth… then I would prefer to remain with Christ than with the truth.”
The long prison term gave Dostoevsky a rare opportunity to live at close quarters with thieves, murderers, and drunken peasants. It gave him a deep understanding of human nature on the darker side of life that later provided the inspiration for his masterpiece, `Crime and Punishment’. Dostoevsky’s liberal view of the inherent goodness of humanity was shattered by his perception of the granite evil he found in his cellmates. Yet over time he also glimpsed the image of God in even the lowest of prisoners. He became convinced that only through being loved is a human being capable of love; just as the apostle John says, `We love because he (God) first loved us.’
From the writings of these two great classical authors, Philip Yancey arrived at the following profound insights, “Taken together, these two Russians became for me, at a crucial time in my Christian pilgrimage, spiritual directors. They helped me come to terms with a central paradox of the Christian life. From Tolstoy, I learned the need to look inside, to the kingdom of God that is within me. I saw how miserably I had failed the high ideals of the gospel. But from Dostoevsky I learned the full extent of grace. Not only the kingdom of God is within me; Christ himself dwells there. `Where sin increased, grace increased all the more,’ is how Paul expressed it.
There is only one way for any of us to resolve the tension between the high ideals of the gospel and the grim reality of ourselves: to accept that we will never measure up, but that we do not have to. We are judged by the righteousness of the Christ who lives within, not our own. Tolstoy got it halfway right: anything that makes me feel comfort with God’s moral standard, anything that makes me feel, `At last, I have arrived’, is a cruel deception. But Dostoevsky got the other half right: anything that makes me feel discomfort with God’s forgiving love is also a cruel deception. ‘ There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’: that message, Leo Tolstoy never fully grasped.”
(Adapted from `The Jesus I Never Knew’ by Philip Yancey)
Food For Thought
All human beings are short of God’s ideal standards of perfection. It is a matter of degree- some are shorter than others. We are all trying to play a game of illusion of who can jump the highest to touch the ceiling of heaven. The so-called spiritual giants may jump ten thousand meters high but they still can’t touch that high moral ceiling. They are still far too short! In measuring the distance between heaven and earth, no human being in history can ever touch the ceiling of heaven on their own merits or strength. It does not matter whether you miss heaven by an inch or by a mile. From God’s perspective, we poor mortals will be forever defined as `failures by a miss’. So all of us- saints or sinners- have to need God’s grace and love to gain access to heaven. God gives everyone a level playing field. We have no option but to depend on God’s unconditional love and grace to nurture our inner peace and self-acceptance.
Submitted by David YKK
THE MAPLE LEAVES MAY FALL IN AUTUMN BUT THE GOLDEN SPLENDOUR OF THE FALLEN LEAVES WILL REMAIN A THING OF BEAUTY FOREVER.
GOD INVITES YOU TO LIVE A SIMPLE LIFE IN AN EXTRAORDINARY WAY THIS EASTER.
I choose to life a life of love in the midst of the beauty and the beast.
If you choose love as your defining life principle, you can’t go too far wrong in the practice of Christian spirituality.
If you truly love God in your heart, that love will be the alchemy that will ultimately melt and transform the base metal of your gross human condition into refined gold.
Of course, I don’t mean that God will immediately change you but if you have the sincere intention to be changed by God’s love, He will transform you according to His own time-table. All you need is patience to wait for God’s timing.
What you need is the right focus on His unconditional love – look straight into the eyes of the crucified Messiah on the cross and trust His promise that He has reserved a place for you in His mansion. Have faith in Jesus’ promise that love would prevail over all evils in the world including your own.
Lent is a unique season to be aware of your spiritual status of your self-image.
Is it positive or negative?
Is it wholesome or wounded?
Have you consulted the Master Physician and followed His prescription?
Have you been feeding the good wolf or the bad wolf inside your spiritual den?
Ponder on these significant questions during the last days of Lent and look at yourself with total self-honesty- no rationalization, no `ifs’ or `buts’.
Just see yourself as God sees you- your flaws blended with your goodness, your vices mixed with your virtues, your gross evil instincts colored by your beautiful ideals and dreams. In short, see yourself as the crystallization of the passion for the possible goodness – the best version of yourself that Jesus had prayed for with his dying breath on Good Friday.
As we ponder at the foot of the cross during this Lenten season, let us pray for the gift of repentance from God for awakened awareness and insights to see the evil elements inside our souls without self-denial. If we are able to empty ourselves of illusions, flawed assumptions, self-righteousness and egoistic rationalization, God in his compassion and unconditional love will certainly shower His abundant showers of grace and love to heal your disorders or sexual addiction to pornography or deviant sexuality.
It is only with an awakened awareness and total acceptance of God’s unconditional love that we can connect our weaknesses with the divine strength to generate the essential self-compassion and self-acceptance for our own salvation during this holy season.
I have come to this conclusion based not by reading spiritual literature but by my own personal experiences that love and faith are the two vital shields that can preserve us in the face of insurmountable evil forces in our world. I believe that these insights come from above to be expressed in my humble words to share with you during this holy season.
It appears to me that hypocrisy, pride and self-righteousness are our own worst enemies during our journey of self-transformation to become the best versions of ourselves.
It is not too difficult to be changed into a being that pleases God.
The ancient Chinese philosophers have passed down three injunctions- simplicity, patience and love for yourself.
If we live our lives from Jesus’ perspectives, we need simplicity to really live a good simple life. The best things have already been given to us free of charge- life, health, dreams, ideals, love and compassion, goodness, faith in God, patience and fortitude to bear with sufferings etc. These rare gifts have already been embedded inside our spirits. All we need is the art of simplicity to be aware of their existence and then use them in our lives. As we go through difficulties and suffering in our lives, we need patience to unearth and tap these gifts for our spiritual growth and well-being.
Finally we need the awareness and the acceptance of God’s unconditional love in order to love ourselves in spite of the presence of our flaws, mistakes and evil instincts.
We simply have to learn to accept the ambivalence in our lives- goodness and evil, black and white, the beauty and the beast, as well as the different shades of gray matters inside our souls. We have to learn from the crucified Christ the art of spiritual alchemy of transforming base metal into gold inside the laboratory of our own souls.
In a nutshell, make an sincere effort to live a simple life in an extraordinary way.
Food For Thought
This is a time for mourning and a time for sorrow.
This is a time to ponder on the epitaph for Vincent Su, a close friend.
Vincent has truly lived a simple life in an extraordinary way.
The way that Jesus would have liked him to live according to the Gospel of Love.
This posting has been inspired by Vincent’s recent death of less than a week.
Through this sorrowful event, God has used Vincent to be my own mirror to see myself and my life without any padding or adornment.
His death has left some fragrance of goodness lingering in my soul.
Like the golden yellow of the fallen autumn leaves.
Through Vincent’s life, God shows that it is possible to live a good and simple life without any complication of worldly materialist distractions or the sensual pleasures of the flesh. He did not need any disorders to add colour to his life.
From my early impression of Vincent, he started his teaching career as a chrysalis in a cocoon -often introvert and moody. But through the passage of four decades with his dedication to ordinary living, Vincent had emerged from his cocoon as a truly beautiful butterfly. As an old friend, Joe, told me over the telephone on hearing the news of his departure, `he is a truly good man’. What better epitaph can any human get?
‘A time to connect the part to the whole.
A time for the lonely drop to rejoin the ocean.
A time for the whimper to be changed into ecstasy.
A time for patience to claim its ultimate prize.
A time to step into God’s mansion.
Farewell, Brother Vincent, till we meet again.’
Submitted by David YKK
TAKE UP THIS CREATIVE CHALLENGE THIS CHRISTMAS TO SEE BEAUTY IN THE SIMPLICITY OF COTTON THREATS & SIMPLE FLOWERS AND TREES IN OUR WORLD.
In this blog, I have always tried to look at Jesus and his Good News in a slightly different way so that an unconventional angle will shed some fresh light and hope.
Writing as an amateur and not as an expert (like theologians or clergy or religious) has an advantage of not being bogged down by the baggage of tradition or religious doctrinal constraints. As such, I can see the Good News with a beginner’s mind- one that is empty and keen to see the truth as it is without being vanished by myth and individual or organizational agendas.
To really follow Jesus’ footsteps, one should learn to see the truth as it is whenever possible. Look at Jesus as a lighthouse and see the light as a warning to caution blinded humanity to stay clear of the ominous rocks and imminent wreckage of excessive consumerism and materialism.
God sends his messages to us through life circumstances which talk louder than words.
To know the first message of God this Christmas, let us look at the birth of Jesus Christ.
What does God want us to learn from the humble birth of Jesus?
Jesus was not born in the smelly stable by accident. He was not born in such a humble dwelling just to provide such vivid contrasting ingredients for writers, composers and artists. If we have eyes to see and ears to hear, the message is loud and clear.
Jesus Christ came into this broken world bearing the gifts of simplicity and humility.
The humble origins of his birth further reinforce the message of simplicity.
Simplicity is the hallmark of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
The tragedy is that we Christians often choose not to see it as a life priority because it does not align with our personal agendas of wealth acquisition and social status climbing.
Simplicity just cannot be accepted in our modern world because choosing simplicity means forgoing our iPhone, iPad, our branded attires and jewellery, favorite cars, etc.
In other words, choosing simplicity means choosing to live as a `nobody’ and becoming low-key human being who will not be socially admired or acknowledged by other people.
In our modern society, who would like to emulate the footsteps of a `nobody’ or a social unknown that is ignored by the mass media or the social institutions?
There is a lot of misunderstanding of the virtue of simplicity.
Simplicity is one of the three great gifts for mankind given by Taoism.
As a matter of fact, the authors, Sara Orem and Larry Demarest, in their book, `Living Simply’, clarify that “Simplicity is a characteristic of mind and cannot be judged by appearances. It is an integration, a stability, a settledness, a straightforwardness, a purity of mind that is often expressed in a simpler lifestyle- a simpler diet, a more orderly routine, a more intelligent use of time, less clutter, less financial chaos, fewer involvements- in other words, less world, more peace.”
The important question to ask ourselves is this- `Do we really want to see simplicity and humility as precious gifts by God?’ or `Do we see these two gifts as worthless stuff that is useless in our modern world- gifts that are fit for the beggars and the unsuccessful;
gifts that have been rejected by the vast majority of humanity?
How you see and answer these questions will colour your perception and the nature of your response to the Good News. Your honest answers will be crucial in defining how you interpret the Gospel.
Do you really think that Jesus comes to make you wealthy, powerful and socially popular?
Or do you really believe that Jesus comes to teach you to live in a more simple lifestyle so that you will really live an authentic life- one that is free of unnecessary material possessions and social clutters or living up to the social expectations of others in our world. Being liberated from the shackles of trivial worldly values and criteria of so-called success means that you can focus on the core Christian teachings of faith, hope and love.
Food For Thought
I can define `success’ for me and be pleased to call myself `successful’ on my own terms. Living on my own terms will certainly immunize me significantly from the negative impact of gossips and slanders.
Today I will try to do one thing that moves me toward where I want to be. Today will be a great day if I don’t have to listen to someone who wants to give me a sermon about how I really can get what I want in life. And like life itself, simplicity is a journey, not a destination. We don’t necessary know when we have arrived, but we will know we are on the path when we have “less world and more peace.”
Submitted by David YKK
AN INSPIRING TRUE STORY OF LOVE AND PERSISTENCE
This story reinforces Jesus’ message of God’s unconditional love and explains the insight behind God’s wonderful love for all sinners and flawed human beings. Love itself is sufficient reason for living a life of suffering, adversity, wounded self-esteem and toxic shame. God, being the essence of love, knows that once His love is accepted by any wounded human being, the miracle of personal transformation and inner healing will begin. This wonderful story provides enduring hope for wounded flawed human beings that there is always the hope of a better tomorrow. God’s promise to every mortal is written boldly and beautifully in the rainbow in the midst of the darkest day with the most ferocious storm.
This is a true story and it will give you the chills.
“At the prodding of my friends, I am writing this story. My name is Wilfred Honor and I am a former elementary school music teacher from Des Moines Iowa. I have always supplemented my income by teaching piano lessons- something I have done for over thirty years.
During those years, I found that children have different levels of musical ability and I have taught many talented students. However, I have also had my share of what I call `musically-challenged’ students- one such student being Robby..
Robby was eleven when his mother (single mom) dropped him off at my doorstep for his first piano lesson. I usually preferred to take in students at an earlier age. But Robby explained that it had always been his mother’s dream to hear him play the piano, so I took him as my pupil.
When Robby began his lessons, I came to the conclusion that he was a hopeless student in music. As much as Robby tried, he lacked the sense of tone and basic rhythm needed to excel. But he dutifully reviewed his scales and some elementary piano pieces that I require all my students to learn. Over the months, he tried and tried while I listened and cringed and tried to encourage him. At the end of each weekly lesson, he would always say, `My mom is going to hear me play someday’. But to me, it seemed hopeless; he just did not have any inborn ability.
I only knew his mom at a distance as she dropped Robby off or waited in her aged car to pick him up. She always waved and smiled, but never dropped in.
Then one day, Robby suddenly stopped coming for his lessons… I thought about calling him, but I assumed that due to his lack of musical ability, he had decided to pursue something else. I was also glad that he stopped coming- he was a bad advertisement for my teaching!
Several weeks later, I mailed a flyer recital to my students’ homes. To my surprise, Robby had also received a flyer and he asked me if he could join in the recital. I explained to him that the recital was meant for current pupils only and as he had dropped out, he really could not qualify. However, he told me the reason for his lapsed lessons -that his mother was very sick and could not take him to his piano lessons but he had been practising at home. He was very insistent and so I agreed to his request.
The night of the recital came and the school gym was packed with parents, relatives, and friends. I put Robby last in the program, just before I was to come up and thank all the students and play a finishing piece. I thought that any damage that he might do would come at the end of the program and I could always salvage his poor performance through my `curtain closer’.
Well, the recital went off without a hitch. Then Robby came on the stage. His clothes were wrinkled and his hair was unkempt. I was even more surprised when he announced that he had chosen to play `Mozart’s Concerto No.21 in C Major’ I was not prepared for what I heard next. His fingers were light on the keys; they even danced nimbly over the ivories. His play was magnificent. Never had I heard Mozart being played so well by anyone his age.
After six and a half minutes he ended in a grand crescendo and everyone was on their feet in wild applause! Overcome and in tears, I ran up on stage and put my arms around Robby in joy. `I have never heard you play like that; Robby, how did you do it? Through the microphone, Robby explained, `Well, Miss Honor,remember that I told you that my mom was sick. Well, actually she had cancer and passed away this morning. And well, she was born deaf; so tonight was the first time she had ever heard me play, and I wanted to make it special.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the hall that evening. I thought to myself: how much richer my life had been for taking Robby as my student. No, I never had a prodigy, but that night I became a prodigy… of Robby. He was the teacher and I was the pupil, for he taught me the meaning of perseverance, love and believing in yourself, and maybe even taking a chance on someone and you didn’t know why.
However the tragedy was that Robby was killed years later in the senseless bombing of the Alfred Murray Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April, 1995.”
This inspiring story of Robby ended in tragedy … a tragedy so senseless because one crazy man believed that the ends justify the means. Many were also killed that day by this mad bomber. Let us ponder – what if someone had shown this mad person and touched him with God’s unconditional love, maybe this terrible tragedy would not have happened. What had prompted this terrible terrorist act- is it a terrible perceived sense of gross personal injustice that triggered so much hate and bitterness? We can safely speculate that hate, bitterness and anger are the toxic emotions that spark off many terrorist acts against society that they perceive as grossly unfair towards them.
Submitted by David YKK
As the great missionary doctor, Dr. Albert Switzer once said, “Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world.”
Knowing that the patterns of my life have been sewn and interwoven with deep shame from the early age of five until the age of sixty-seven, I have literally experienced most forms of shame, humiliation, and wounded self-esteem. Having learned (and still learning) some insights of the art of coping with shame puts on my shoulder the responsibility of helping other victims out there to cross their deep chasm of suffering related to social rejection and self-hate and cope with their intra-personal negative toxic emotions.
I cannot bury my story and rich experiences of low self-esteem and shame and pretend that nothing has ever happened. That would be a futile exercise in self-denial. This is an interesting story with lots of mistakes and lots of lessons that I have learned for my own recovery and self-development. More importantly, the pains and sufferings extracted from deep shame can be transformed into stepping stones for other victims of shame to transcend their own suffering and their own disorders. We are all interconnected in the big picture of life and what happens to one cell can also be learned by other intelligent cells. We must not forget that this is a learning universe full of lessons and all kinds of learning situations to enable the living organisms to evolve and become better living things. This universal law applies to all living things from the smallest virus to human beings.
“It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.”
John Andrew Holmes
As for human beings, we are all struggling with our hostile environments in our different worlds to cope and adapt so that we can develop into better human beings. If I don’t share my story of shame and my life skills in coping with shame, then it would be a tragic waste when it is buried by the heaps of history.
Let me rise above this difficult life and share my interesting story and experiences with those who need them badly to carry on living meaningful and fulfilling lives.
`I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.’ Pablo Casals
Food for Thought
You need to find your own unique meaning of life from your own adversity and use own suffering as your basic ingredient to craft and redesign a better human being for your body. You need not be too ambitious to reach for the unreachable stars in the infinite sky. You can just look down at your feet to pick up the broken glasses on the ground or fill up the pot holes on your walking path to prevent someone from falling in. Or give s little smile to the homeless or buy them a cup of coffee as a kind gesture from one human being to another human being. This is the essence of being human. I can assure you that even a small gesture like this will go a long way towards encouraging another desperate soul to go on living in our broken world.
Ponder on the wisdom of these words by E.E. Cummings, “We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”
Submitted by David YKK
Life is like an onion! Looking for the truth of who you really are is your supreme responsibility. Once you have summoned the courage to see your authentic self, then you would have discovered a significant part of the meaning in your life.
Like the onion, life is made up of layers and layers of complexities. As you go through different stages of your life, God would reveal to you who you really are. If you have the experience of peeling an onion, you know how tearful and miserable the process can be. Your eyes are the most vulnerable organ exposed to the irritants given out by the onion. It takes a certain amount of courage, persistence and endurance to peel an onion to the core.
Similarly, it also takes lots of courage, self-honesty, self-denial, and humility to search for the truth of your real identity. I can assure you it is a very unpleasant task unmasking the many layers of who you really are. At the end of the process, you may even suffer a culture shock unless you use rationalization and self-denial as your typical shields to ward off a shower of sparks that may dazzle or blind you temporarily. If you do that, the art of rationalization and self-denial will simply numb your self-honesty about yourself and will portray a fake picture to you- a portrait with an artificial veneer that you want others to see. But you will not find your authentic self.
Why is it so important to find your authentic self? Your authentic self is just like a valuable piece of raw diamond. When it was first brought out of the deep earth, it was stuck with stubborn mud that marred its sparkling beauty. As a human being, until and unless one peels away the various layers that wrap round one’s essential self, one will journey through life guided and deluded by one’s imagination, desires and cravings of the ego devoid of real love. What you want or desire to portray does not necessarily represent the reality of your true self.
The experience of peeling an onion will provide an insight that suffering is necessary in our search of your true self. Every time you peel one layer of your complex life, the chemical sparks released will blind you temporarily and hurt your vision. The ugly inputs may hurt your eyes and upset your soul but with acceptance and humility, they may be the best things that you have discovered in your life. These are vital pieces of emotional baggage that have made you what you are today- miserable, anxious, cynical and vulnerable. But they are also the crucial ingredients that you have to use to recast into your stepping stones to an enriching and fulfilling spiritual life. You have the choice to look straight and confront them with self-honesty and transform them. Or you can choose the lesser but more comfortable option- the road most people travel- by ignoring them, denying them and simply burying them again in your subconscious like an ostrich burying its head in the sand to protect itself. But it is important to persist in this your mysterious and fuzzy task because by knowing and recognizing your flaws and your failings at every stage of your life, you also have the opportunities of rectifying them. In this painful process, you will gradually learn the art of humility- the ability to see yourself as you really are- your liabilities and your assets, your yin and your yang, your evil and your good. In short, through the eyes of humility, you will see yourself in perspective – a little fragment of divinity struggling to polish and transform itself from an `imperfectly beautiful’ creature into a `perfectly beautiful being’ according to God’s ultimate will and design.
No matter how wounded you may be or how degraded you are in the eyes of others, take heart because at best, you are also another piece of valuable diamond trying to remove your impurities to sparkle and please God. No amount of wounded self-esteem can stop a diamond from becoming diamond! Only you can stop this transformational process of self-regeneration by becoming your own worst enemy with your self-denial and lack of self-honesty.
Food For Thought
`Many who are working among the suffering or poor say the same… We are saved by those whom we go to save, and both of us are then saved in spite of ourselves… Suffering for and with the other seems to be the only way we know that our lives are not about us. The reason we sin and suffer is not so much because we are weak but simply because we are human. To be human means to be imperfect and in process.’ (Richard Rohr)
Submitted by David YKK
THE UNCONDITIONAL LOVE OF GOD IS FOR ALL HUMAN BEINGS WITHOUT EXCEPTION.
Love is the international language that cuts across all social, ethnic, and religious barriers because all religions converge on love. Love is the only song that pleases the ears and enlightens the hearts of the Buddhists, Moslems, Jews, Taoists Christians and the spiritually-enlightened ones in our broken world.
In a compassionate, creative and enlightened world -
God’s unconditional love is something that the blind can see and the deaf can hear; the depressed can be uplifted by joy and the suicidal can be rejuvenated by the wonders of living.
It is that rare pearl that sets the prisoners free from their psychological shackles and calms the troubled souls with a deep inner peace.
Something that can nurse and nurture the unwanted babies and infants back to health.
Love is simply the essence of life in the universe, just as air is to the birds and water is to the fish. So is love to all human beings.
What more testimony do we need when we see that without love, the unwanted babies in the orphanages simply shrivel and perish. But in loving arms, other fortunate babies in similar circumstances would continue to live and thrive.
So is love to all human beings. With love, the mistakes are merely stepping stones; without love, mistakes become hardened and degenerate into more terrible crimes. With love, the prisoners see the stars through the windows; without love, they can only see mud down below. With love, the shame evaporates like smoke; without love, the shame is trapped in the heart and becomes rancid and turns toxic, eventually corrupting the whole body and mind. With love, the wounded self-esteem experiences wholesome healing and the wounded beast blossoms into a beauty; without love, the wounded self-esteem degenerates into a monster filled with hate and bitterness that ultimately pollutes and damages the whole community.
What proofs do we need? Just look at the leaders who started all the unjust horrible wars in our broken world. Just look for love in their broken lives and you will get the answer for the common dominant cause of the wars. `It was the best of times and it was the worst of times’ (Charles Dickens). The ultimate deciding factors almost always converge on the central theme of love. The absence of love usually leads to the birth of hate, bitterness, revenge, anger, wounded self-esteems that would degenerate into violent conflicts and warfares.
Love is the positive life-force that prevails in our world. Why is love so powerful? Because love is the creative force based on the nature of God. God is love and his Spirit is the essence of love.
A Prayer for Contemplation
Oh, God! when I have food, help me to remember the hungry.
When I have work, help me remember the jobless.
When I have a warm home, help me to remember the homeless.
When I am without pain, help me to remember those who suffer.
And remembering, help me to destroy my complacency.
And bestir my compassion, make me concerned enough to help.
By word and deed, those who cry out-
For what we take for granted.
Submitted by David YKK
YOUR CREATIVE ATTITUDE AND AWARENESS ARE INTERCONNECTED.
`The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.’
William James, `Father of Modern Psychology’
This wonderful yet simple insight can come alive with our awareness. The more we ponder and reflect on this wise quotation, the more we will realize that we can change our flawed life by changing our attitude. Awareness is the crucial mental skill to discern the workings of our minds when dealing with compulsive disorders. Just as Dr. Richard Carlson, the author of `Shortcut Through Therapy’, says: “Catching yourself in the act of dysfunctional thinking is a very powerful tool. It allows you to maintain a better feeling within yourself. The goal, you will see, is to `catch yourself’ early in the process, before your thinking gets out of hand.”
To change your attitude also means to change your perception of things.
The key to living a happy life is to create new solutions to old problems by shifting the way you look at life. This is basic to creative perception.
As the wise saying goes, “Life is ten percent of how you make it and ninety percent how you take it.” It is true that you cannot change the events in your life, but you can change the interpretation of the events. And through a positive interpretation of the events, you can craft a positive response towards the events or problems. That is why it is so important to nurture a positive attitude in life because your attitude is closely intertwined with your response. A positive attitude will usually produce a positive response while a negative attitude will bring about a pessimistic response.
According to the Taoist philosophy, `In life, your response is everything!’
