Category Archives: Reflections

Passing on of a Bestie

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My very dear friend passed on on March 15, 2024. Her health was deteriorating from the wide spread of cancer cells in her body. She was becoming thinner and weaker. Other friends told me she already arranged for her funeral. And that day came when in a whatsapp group, she mentioned that her petscan results was better than before. We were all cheering for her. Then, in the evening, a message came that she was in hospital ICU followed by a message that she passed on….

Deep inside, I couldn’t/didn’t register that she was going to leave this playground so soon. We shared so much fun trips together for the past 20 years. Was it a denial, I still don’t know. I felt a loss of a physical person that I can see and move around with, someone who always speaks with supportive and encouraging words in all my life endeavours that I shared with her.

However, her moving on gave me a sense of reality to this short life we have on earth. It anchors me more into the impermanence of life.

Here I would like to share a passage name, “Imagine God Said …”

Imagine God said, “I’m sending you to Earth to play a game for awhile and then I’ll beam you back. 
It’s a grand experiment. 
Whatever you do, don’t get caught up in the results. 
You’ll be given some lucky cards and you’ll be forced to face some dragons, just like everyone else. 
There are really no rules, except that what goes around, comes around. 
Let truth, curiosity, and the expansion of happiness draw you forward along your path. 
Enjoy the game.  Follow your spirit. 
Observe your reactions to the phenomena you encounter. 
See what it feels like to pretend to be an entity that is separate from me. 
But, remember your origin. 
Don’t worry about losing or winning the game because nobody actually wins and nobody actually loses, regardless of appearance.
Be more concerned about losing yourself.

A Class about Goals

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I ran an online class about getting what we want using The Work.
I created a playground for all of us to set goals for the new year. We look at things that we wanted to achieve, to do, to complete but have postponed, not putting as our priority, things that we are not willing to face it, kept procrastinating on.

I noticed that some of us are so used to be driven by stress, by things that we need to do out of survival and when we have worked and undo the stress, we don’t move forward. It’s like there is no reason to move forward, and people became stagnant, and they wondered what happen to them.

But, if we can simply work on the mental blocks, won’t we be more open to trying new things, freer to explore, play and experience….

And if we set an intention for our goals, and we identify the inner experience we would like to have when we have achieve our goals, then we are playing an inner game. And it becomes a lot more fun and best of all, you can never fail in this little game of life.

Boredom

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With the new Covid-19 lockdown in the entire Malaysia, I felt the feeling of not wanting to do anything. It’s not that I don’t cook or do what is needed to be done. I just feel the restlessness that I haven’t felt for a long long time.

A dear friend suggested that I sew, another suggested I read, run workshops…. etc..

I realized that it isn’t the outside doing that is causing this unsettled feeling. As I sat and looked inward, I noticed that we are constantly reacting to what life brings us. And if there is no stress or events that we must attend to, there is like a loss of an identity. To many this is like a hopelessness. “You must be lost!”, “there has to be a purpose in your life”.

As I tune into these voices of the masses, I realize that there is a lingering feeling that tinted my life. Thus, a constant connection with the inner self helps to re-establish oneself back to the reality ——a reality where fullness and abundance is always there, waiting to be experienced.

Doing what is in front of me. That is my entire purpose for this precious moment until the next thought or the next thing that show up and I move on. From this place, life can be lived very simply.

Namaste!

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Finally got a dear friend to fix the wordpress error for me and I could write again.

I want to talk about our divinity as human. Many years ago, I was told by someone that the word “Namaste” means the divine in me salutes to the divine in you. When I heard that explanation, it was like a nectar to my soul. I thought to myself, what a beautiful expression that was.

And it always stuck me how that would look like living out in this physical world. In order to salute your divinity, I would have to acknowledge my own divinity. And I come to see that in this world that we live in, the systems we have running shun that off from us. If we look at religion, say, the Christianity, in order to be one, you have to accept the basic belief that you are a sinner. “Forgive me Father for I have sinned”. How can a sinner ever acknowledge its’ divinity? Especially when I have to constantly be conscious of my wrong doings in order to repent?

I am not saying that repent or confession doesn’t work, but if I think there is really something outside that is watching me and judging me other than my own conscience at work, I would be living in a lot of fear.

And it would take another level of responsibility to move beyond an almighty entity to living out my life relying on my own conscience. One would have to be conscious of all levels of hideouts that the ego does. And really come to terms with all levels of self-responsibility. One would have to be very vigilant and yet gentle as gentleness is the door to our hearts.

Namaste!

Why We Do What We Do

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A dear dear friend is torn between his job and his family. According to him, he took up the job because his parents thought that was the best job for him and they wanted him to work there. On the other hand, he didn’t like the job at all.

Sometimes in life, we do certain things to gain love, approval and appreciation (LAA) from people whom we love. We were so attached to gaining the LAA from them that we never asked the one that matter the most —— our dear self.

We could go on like that for a while and one day we just couldn’t take it anymore. We want a way out. And we think we need a very good reason to justify our actions. We start to blame them for making us do what we don’t like, we feel angry that they never care about what we like. That’s usually how the story goes.

Like Katie says, “Until we take responsibility for our thoughts and actions, the world would be our enemy”.

Gift of A Body

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Starting to turn around from a diarrhea that lasted for 5 days. To me, there was a lot of gifts in this period of time. It was a time for me to slow down, to honor this kind and loving body that I am residing in.

I remembered how I used to disengage from this body with the strict rigid beliefs that the body is impermanent, that I shouldn’t pay attention to it, should evolve beyond the body. In that, I never really checked in with my body at all. I still remembered those days when I had menstruation cramps, I kept asking why I was in a woman’s body instead of a man’s.

It is really very painful to live from a place where we deny what is in front of us, believing that we should be having the opposite of what we have now. We totally cut off from the possibilities of the best experience from what is happening to us.
“Things happen for us, not to us”. Are you brave enough to let go of the victim role and step forward to look inside ourselves and explore how it could be true that what we are experiencing now is best for us?

Why is it best for me to have the diarrhea?
Why is it best for me to be in a woman’s body?

And the best part is, whatever answers I may find within myself and shared with you could only be a reference for you. The gift is you going in to find your own answers. Why is it good for me….

And with that mindset, we embark on a journey of life filled with gratitude and humility.

Why are you not doing what you love?

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Do-What-You-Love

Met up with an old friend last weekend.  She was very excited as she just received her certification in yoga.  She started to teach part time in her friend’s studio.  It’s a joy seeing her finally getting to do what she enjoys.

So often in life, we just hold on to what we wanted to do.  And we give excuses like:

Wait till I am rich…
Wait till I have this XXXX amount of money…
Wait till my kids are grown…
Wait till my wife approve of it…

There is really nothing wrong with holding off… I always believe that there is a time for everything.  However,  many people hold that dream far away, it seems to help them to stay anchored in this dream.  The ego feels safe thinking it has an unfulfilled dream that it needs to do whatever it is doing now to work towards it.

This is when death comes as a great teacher.  It takes out right into the core of who we are.  Given this amount of time that we think we have, what is it that is really important to us?  Do we still want to continue this way of life we are living, do we still want to sweat over this stuff that is bothering us, do we want to carry this emotional burden to our death beds?

Death and sickness allows us to take an honest inventory into our lives on earth.  And we start to make amendments in our lives and start anew NOW.  We never ever lose when death comes, birth always awaits on the other side.  Without the concept of death, would there be life?

I am NOW and now I AM.

Personality doesn’t love, Part 1

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“Personality doesn’t love, we/they always want something”

I hear this from Katie many years ago and coming to see the truth of this statement has liberated me from many unnecessary pain in my life.

For years, we have been told and taught ways to be.
“Be generous, don’t be selfish…”
“Be kind, always be polite, don’t be rude….”
Just to name a few.
And if we really look hard enough, are we all kind, polite and generous?  Why aren’t we?
Some of us spend so much time striving to be that and when we aren’t as good as we thought we are, we punish ourselves, we abuse ourselves.  And if we are “good” enough we project out onto others, and we get upset when we read about how people are not kind, not generous and rude to each other.

If we have enough courage to go inside, we come to see that every time I TRY to be kind, polite, generous, doing good, I am trying to get something for myself.  I am trying to do, say something or act in certain way so that you will think certain way about me, to give me what I want – the image that I want you to see me as.  And this is a lot of hard work.

So, the question is, if we don’t work so hard to be kind, polite and generous, does it mean that we are cruel, rude and selfish?  This is what your mind would have you think.

Is it really true that if one does’t act that way, one is cruel?
How do I treat the person when i think this thought?
How would I treat him/her if I never have the thought that if he/she doesn’t do this, he/she is cruel?
And with a turnaround that he/she is kind, if our minds are open enough, we come to see that what he/she does can be a kind thing also.

 

 

Do you really want to know the truth?

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For many years, I termed myself as a truth seeker and Buddhism has been the foundation of where I learned most of my life principles from. However, the more I knew, the more painful my life was. A simple teaching that says, “True seekers never see mistakes in others” – in chinese 若真修道人,不见他人过 was the killer. I knew in my mind that I was not supposed to see mistakes in other, but, I saw that in everyone that is around me and I couldn’t stop myself from judging them pettily in my mind, which made me even more mad with myself. How could I still judge and see mistakes in others after being a Buddhist for so long!!! I couldn’t find a way out of my misery.

And when I found The Work, I really saw how it was helping me to live the principles – not by mind control or denial or by force. It was through answering the 4 questions and slowly, gently, come to see that I am a human being. It’s through the mirror on the outside that I come to know my very own self. It takes a lot of courage and willingness to be vulnerable as the ego starts to loosen and not be the center of my life.

So, what does it take to have truth as the foundation of your life? I remembered those days when I already have The Work in my life, I would go to my friends and ask them, “if you can say anything about me without worrying about me getting upset, angry or unfriend you, what would that be, what would you say?” I would really listen as they said what they said, and really go inside and feel if there is any uneasy feelings around what I hear. I wanted to allow people to share what is true for them, I wanted to hear their truth, not what I want to hear. I became so courageous because I knew what to do if I notice any hurt feelings, feeling of wanting to run away, feeling of being victimised, feeling of being misunderstood, feeling of separation.

Through The Work and many worksheets that I did, I come to realized for myself that it is never what a person says that hurts me, it is what I think he says that is hurting me. Instead of taking it personally, trying to hide or suppress my feelings, and cut the person out from my life, I question what I think he/she is saying. People no longer have to hide or careful with words around me, they get to be themselves. And I never have to do that to myself and others either. Relationship becomes very simple, authentic and open.

So, if you feel it is very scary to hear the truth about what someone thinks about you, question your thinking. That’s all it takes. It’s a fun ride and there is so much freedom on the other side of the ride.

When Someone Criticize Us

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Girl holding note
When Someone Criticize Us:

Before doing The Work, we become sad, hurt, feel being wronged, feel like a victim, we get personal, and we ask, “how could they do this to me… ” ;(

When we start doing The Work, we feel like we are walking on and through burning fire, we find ourselves still in one piece after that. We start to experience what it means by the outside world is our projection. We become more courageous. We are more willing to die in our egoic self. :I

After doing The Work for a while, we become very excited when we hear it, we ask for more, we take in the criticism like a newly discovered child that we never knew we have. We are so grateful for the gift of that missing piece that is given by them.