Pursuing relationship and self actualization are, in fact, opposite choices. 

However, like the line between night and day, or dreaming and waking, there is a place where they become the same thing.

This is the first clue to the Buddhist idea of rigpa.

The closest moment to the rigpa is the moment of creativity.  That is why we must be very careful of our thoughts.  To give our life energy to a thought or idea is to realize it.

Original painting by Malian. Prints available at http://www.mauliolafestival.com

The portals. All we are doing is telling a story about ourselves to everyone. Trying to tell a true story. And the portals are when we decide it’s time to change our story.

Yudhistira Purwanto took this photograph in Jogjakarta, Indonesia. I met him and his crew of cinematographic friends as I made my pilgrimage to my mother’s birthplace; becoming more of who I really am. Telling a truer story about me.

Portals are scary. We have to trust that there is something better on the other side. This  surrender is the teaching of the Asian philosophies. All the fantasy generated by the Ahamkara, the I-Maker (ego in English) is simply illusion. To invest in the illusion is a grand mistake.

I am Asian. It is my culture to release the illusion. It’s only a story. Maybe a playful story, maybe interesting. Maybe heart-rendering. But just a story. A story we can change.

Happy New Moon.

We live in an age where money is not used to meet real physical needs.

Rather, money is used to meet emotional needs.

When something seems too painful, too difficult to tackle, or too confusing, looking at numbers seems to provide reassurance that at least something in the world is reliable and true.

Or does it?  Because so many people with unresolved pain and broken hearts, working through the money system, distorts it.

The ideal of the market is very different from the emotional, impulse driven decision making of people who live through money.

What we have forgotten is that the ancient healers had ways of healing broken hearts, setting us free from inner torment.  Many people still learn their ways today and use them to heal each other.

Traditional healers often worked via emotions, thoughts, and dreams; intangible experiences that we now know influence our body’s health and well being, and our choices through neurotransmitters.

Escaping from emotional chaos into money does not ever heal the wound that causes the chaos.  There are ways to heal that wound, but it has to be looked at, spoken of, and treated.  It cannot heal if it is ignored.

In the world where ignored wounds express themselves unconsciously through peoples’ decisions about money, the pain has free rein to unleash itself across the face of the earth.

It is better when we take time to care for ourselves enough, to experience emotional healing.  In order to do this, we must believe that we are worthy of healing.  We must be worthy of love, in our own imagination.  We must be worthy of health, joy, and balance.

We have to forgive ourselves for everything we have ever regretted in our lives and completely accept that forgiveness.  Then, our true healing can begin.

Click photo to follow my artistic journey on Facebook.

Today I read about a study that shows that the less power people have, the more their psychology adjusts to see the way things are as positive.

It’s a coping mechanism designed to protect an animal that has no choice; a carryover from our earlier stages of evolution.

However, we have a choice now.

We have a choice to exert our more recently evolved decision making capacity on behalf of our survival as a species.  We need to guide our own minds, our mammalian instincts with all of the collective might of human efforts to be more conscious throughout history.

So, the particular mammalian instinct I’m talking about here – the one where we tend to view the way things are positively even when it’s going to get us hurt very badly – this one tends to show up in our experience as the fear that we are not worthy of love.

Will I still be loved if I step out in a new truth?  Will others feel hurt by me pointing out the error of our ways?  Will people attack me?  Most to the point – if they do, do I deserve it?

We have a powerful instinctual investment in preserving social bonds.  Our job is to gently and tenderly undo the bonds that are tied around things we need to change, and to carefully remake those bonds in a healthier, better pattern.

Ultimately, the answer to the question “am I worthy of love?” is always yes.

Even the worst person is still a human being who needs love.  In fact, those are always the people suffering from love anorexia, they are starving for love.  Unconditional love heals.  If we could love unconditionally while setting good boundaries and loving ourselves first, it would work miracles on our planet.