Confusing Confessions

I was born an educator. The first ten years, I taught by repeating; the next ten years, I taught from knowledge; the following ten years, I taught from experience. Now, I teach from my errors.

Nothing brings us closer as humans, than our shared foibles and vulnerabilities.  The old aphorism states that “Errare humanum est” (it is human to err)…and yet, I think it is errors that make us human. Behind every deed there is an attitude, our outlook on life. But behind that, there is a mental pattern of associations that we create from our beliefs. So behind every error, we must look for the faulty thought-sequence we believe to be true.

These are some of my errors, which I share, not with the false expectation that they will help you avoid repeating yours, because somehow we each have to live our own mistakes, but in the hope that my boldness will encourage you to seek and reset your own false belief systems.

The hardest thing in my life has not been: becoming a doctor or a master in public health, or my field training in epidemiology, or my training as a military; nor running a national program against AIDS or spiking risk among adolescents to build resilient, life-driven pathways from death to health, but rather- having been born a girl.

I was the first-born of a Mexican patriarch, and not being  a boy, I was born a disappointment. Perhaps to appease such grievance, my father named me after his first mistress and as a child I became his girlfriend; he called me:  “novia mia”. That was my first confusion. He used to give me money, while keeping it from my mother. I embedded rivalry, guilt and carried shame and misgivings.

Now, he would have had me become a lady, since he inscribed me to Vogue magazine when I was fourteen – but oops! second disappointment. When I became ‘of-age’ for the ‘sex-talk’, he insisted I shun all male relationships, lest I become a whore. Little did he know I was no longer a virgin and his lecture was only branding me: ‘disgraced’.

Now my Mom taught me that to love was to suffer. And boy, she suffered enough: being an American single daughter, who ran after her love from the first-world, to live in the third-world was in itself a sacrifice. But then having five children, each 10 months apart, epitomized it.

I also lived ten years with our British tutor with whom we sang as a family quintet, songs that set the tune and rhythm to my life: the Impossible Dream, the Quijote of the Mancha and Sound of Music.

So my guilt came from my father; my self-sacrifice came from my mother; and my idyllic fantasy, from my tutor. These became my belief systems.
When my prince charming appeared, a stalwart Catholic believer, and asked me to marry him, I felt unworthy. And of all things, out of love for him, I self-sacrificed becoming a nun; a cloistered nun at that! Of course, I was fully equipped to enter the monastery: I was a whore in disgrace, who needed penance, to love;  a “problem to be solved”-like Maria in Sound of Music.  I even remember singing to the St. Joseph’s Carmelite nuns, from a ladder, as I enacted the theme song : “The hills are alive”. Little did I know it was the first scene to the screen-play that I would play-out throughout my entire life.
Now, my monastic experience was heart- wrenching but glorifying. Away from TV, radio, computer, newspaper or even books, with a vow of silence, poverty and obedience, I learned to wash, clean, mend and soothe my soul. My past Harvard aggrandizement of self-worth, mopped away. My years as a postulant, as a novice, and as a nun committed by marriage to God (in my Mother´s wedding dress) confronted me with the inner battle between my higher and lower selves. Everything became a metaphor: medieval ceremonies such as laying in meditation in a coffin, as a symbol for the need to die to the body in order to be reborn in spirit; old nuns in brown and black coiffures singing rocking songs to an enamel representation of Jesus, throughout the night; the intention of saving souls with every spot, obsessively cleaned…are memories that have rescued me from turmoil later in life. The grounding experience would have been enough to save me had I left, from my own free will. But my belief system (and cowardice to face life) was wired to have me play out the shame of having been ‘put out’. My restlessness could not be acquitted with self-flagellation; too much of a free thinker, too much of a dreamer.  Imagine the disgrace and drama of having been rejected not only by nuns but by God himself. ..paradise lost…and with it, the hope of being ‘good’. It just ratified that I was unworthy; painfully defeated as I witnessed my prince-charming’s marriage to someone better, when I returned.
Now these are examples of how we thread the canvas of our lives into self-built dramas; the threads of thought and their color are set by our beliefs and attitudes.
I won´t abound on the same dramatic pattern I have relived over and over again: my marriage to an older, wonderful man, defeated unto death by the guilt of his son’s suicide; my remarriage to a problem drinker, damaged by resentment against a mother who let her lover abuse his sister…
On and on… I have continued playing out the Impossible Dream, fighting ‘the unbeatable foe’ of AIDS, trying to ‘ right the un-rightable wrong’ even unto court, in an international white-collar scandal that deviated AIDS funds and unjustly blamed me ; fighting for women´s rights among sex-workers, and dignifying the right to love beyond color, race, sex, social institutions and even personal judgment. Love should not be erased by contract or divorce. Love is eternal and we should strive to strengthen its bonds, networking with good will. And yet, we are what we believe.

Now, none of this is true. Its a product of my own thought formation. We build associations with what we believe.

Check your own belief patterns. Which ones have molded your lives?

Be selective. Not all beliefs are bad. My heavenly husband still walks with me and despite my unworthiness, even gave me a late child born on Christmas Day.

Some beliefs do come true.

Patching, Packing, P’aching- to Love:

Trying to Learn to Love, through consciousness, I have realized that it can only be done a step at a time, inch by inch, day by day. That’s why God gave us Time, with the promise that we have eternity to get it right. And yet, we are relentlessly pressured by the shadow of death.

Now that my loved ones are making amends, patching up old wounds, packing their life-acquired goods before saying good-bye, I can only love them, by aching. It should come to me as no surprise, since, when the coin of awareness was tossed, in my life, it fell- pain-side up. Pleasure lost.  I learned to love through pain.

Early on, I learned that to ache was to love. As a child, every time I hurt, I was cared for; when I cried, I was embraced; when I was sorry, I was loved. Christ on the Cross, exemplified the Supreme act of Love by dying for us. So at this late age in time, I love by ‘aching’. Thus, when I hurt I tend to want to caress others´ pain away lovingly, knowing I am hurting from love. However sharing others’ sufferings with them, is not enough. It may lead to understanding and empathy, but it does not transform reality.

For a while now, I have been trying to change reality by ´praying’. I try evoking and breathing in, God’s Goodness, while exhaling all tension, anger and ill feelings. However, as I do it I am aware that I am releasing, all my negative feelings unto the world. I should rather, be taking in the world’s wrongs and ‘righting’ them, through Love. Thus, I could transform negativity, into blessings and ‘p-ray’ them back out, into the world. That requires transmuting pain into love.

We are all individual drops of water making way into the sea. When we unite with other droplets, we fuse our individuality to become one with them, as we gush together in the flow of life. Merging with others, I lose my subjective experiencing, and expand awareness through their experiences. My pain ceases to be mine when I expand my feelings, to perceive those of others and then give myself up, to be transformed into a ‘oneness’, altogether different. Thus, pain ceases, when there is no one to ache. Only then, can it be transformed into compelling Love. That is how I have come to understand that pain is just another way of perception. Stepping out of my experience of pain, I can become that added little drop of intention and become part of a greater flow of Love. Perhaps trying it, I could release the pain I feel for others and transform it into Love.

I was thinking how this century has brought about hopelessness, with the ill omen that menaces it-being the end on the world. But when I see my daughter elate into bubbles over a boy and be transformed into joy as she prepares for a party, I realize it must be a feeling that comes only as ‘our worlds’ get closer to their own ‘end’. Life seems to go on, as does the experiencing of it. So, with this renewed awareness, I chose to live what is left of it, transforming pain into love. Only then can I experience the pleasure of enjoyment and the grace of gratitude, for having a new day.

Learning to Love: Imagination?

The other day I was stung by a scorpion…it must not have been very poisonous because I did not get an anaphylactic shock. It was about as big as the palm of my hand, black and very angry as it forked its clippers wildly, when we finally killed it. Unfortunately, it stung me right in the nerve that innervates the plantar tendon of my sole; exactly on my ‘Achilles heel’.

As I have taken it upon myself to reflect on the underlying, every day lessons on Higher Loving, and give meaning to the synchronicity in my life, I kept asking myself ‘What meaning could a scorpion’s sting possibly have?’ ‘What was it telling me’. ‘What was this continuous burning pain in my ‘sole’ or should I say ‘soul’ for?’ ‘Why this crippling wound in my Achilles heel?’ It certainly was a constant reminder of my ‘soul’s vulnerability’. But why?  I knew it was not circumstantial.

After going over my familiar guilt-ridden associations, I ruled out punishment, sabotage, purging and penance. It had to have a constructive reason. As I explored my feelings related to it all, I uncovered frustrated anger at myself for having known, unknowingly, all along, that there was a scorpion in my room. I had even mentioned it to my family…but their familiar response to my gnawing intuition, only ratified that ‘it was just another crazy product of my imagination’. Even after being stung I denied my own intuition. It wasn´t till after we found it, the next day, that I was proved right. So, why didn´t I listen to myself? That has been my problem, along life. I’ve listened to others, rather than myself, always belittling my inner perceptions, which I shun as if I were indeed, ‘crazy’. Worse still, I thought perhaps it was my imagination that was actually creating the circumstances which I envisioned, would happen?

Suddenly, it dawned on me. The whole thing had a lesson to be learned. I had, in some weird way, unconsciously, provoked the circumstances that made for the scorpion to sting me. 

We are all generators of the things that happen to us. I had, somehow, agreed or accepted for this pain to come upon myself, much as I have created the problems and crises in my life, perhaps only to justify my self-commiseration as a victim.

Still, I kept asking my Higher Self: ‘But Why?’ ‘What for?’ ‘Why this continual pain?---and just like that, I understood. The pain was to remind me I have, as we all have, the capacity to create and change the circumstances around us. However, most of the time, we are unaware of it. So, we unconsciously induce only negative thoughts and effects…

The scorpion’s poisonous sting in my nerve has now, given me a constant reminder of the capacity we all have, to imagine, create and bring upon ourselves and others whatever we wish for. Now, this crippling pain has made me aware and conscious of the thoughts and choices, which I am consciously trying to use to wish for health, goodness and peace.

As as child, I used to play with an imaginary magic wand, waving it around to bless the people I met on the street, with. Sometimes at night, while trying to sleep, I would imagine flying into hospital rooms and showering those, sick, with ‘happy’ powders. But as I grew older I dismissed it all as ‘childish play’.

Now, my pain has made me wonder if we can, in fact create magic.

Learning to Love on my Birthday

With the poet Dylan Thomas..I can say:

It was my sixtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from Acapulco seas and neighbor bees
As the turtles pooled and the NGO priested shore set them free
While the evening beckons
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of time on my net webbed memory
Sets Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping realization that I have little time left to learn to love.
My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the hats and huts and violence..
And I rose
As the sun set on my rainy autumn
And I walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border of time
And the gates Of chance.
There could I marvel my birthday away ‘fore the weather turns around.
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
with the sun.
It was my sixtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the autumn eve
Though the town below lays leaved in blood.
O may my heart’s truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year’s turning.

Learning to Love: Higgs Boson and Love

The 4 of July, 2012 the CERN particle accelerator in Geneve announced the discovery of the Higgs Boson, the fundamental particle of the Universe, from which ‘energy’ is transformed into ‘mass’. Apparently, it is a moving particle that is slowed down by the resistance of an invisible surrounding ‘field’ of ‘energy’ from which ‘mass’ is generated.
The idea of a surrounding ‘field of energy’ in which the universe itself, floats, is awe-inspiring. Just visualizing its gentleness, as a heaving sea of potential, gives me peace. In my understanding, this surrounding ‘field’ in which everything stirs, is much as the encompassing field of Love that envelops Life.
Making an analogy of the creative process in ‘energy-into-mass’, with the creative process of ‘ideas-into-their manifestation’, this enveloping field and its resistance become vital. Higgs’ fundamental particle, could then be compared to the initial impulse of an ‘Idea’, as it stirs ripples of movement and change through the ‘waters’ of potential. Higgs field of energy could then be compared to that of a sea of Love, that shapes everything into life ‘manifest’. Its counteractive effect in the slowing of energy into mass could be compared to the counteraction of hardships in love, shaping life into existence. Such is the creative process. Ideas generated, are made manifest, as this field of Love shapes them into their manifestation. I like to believe that everything that exists is due to such expression of an ’Idea’. It is this initial impulse that generates the tangible/visible embodiment of everything that becomes ‘manifest’. This ‘causal’ impulse, would seem to ‘effect’ soft ripples of creativity in such a ‘sea’.  The resistance of Higgs field of energy builds mass much as the resistance of ‘Love’ counteracting ideas with chaos, and everyday problems shapes reality.
The creative process would then involve projected ‘ideas’ shaped by a sea of Loving resistance into manifest existence. Something like Higgs particles of energy, that are turned into mass with the resistance of a surrounding field . Thus, ideas are like these generative impulses whose energy is ‘slowed’ down be the resistance of a field of Love

Learning to Love: Feedback

Does communication depend on the lover’s capacity to ‘send’ his message of love? Does it depend on the loved one’s capacity to ‘receive’? Is it the message of love, itself, that determines the quality of mutual ‘communion’ in their communication? Is it the code, .. the ‘decoding’, or the ‘channel’ ? It is clear that all are important: the lover, as sender; his message, coded to his ´loved ones’ understanding; the channel used to transmit it with fidelity; and the willingness of the ‘loved one’s’ open reception to accept the message of Love.
Much of loving is about communication. Hence, the importance of analyzing all the elements involved, to try to solve the difficulties in the relationship between ‘lover’ and ‘loved one’.
We were talking about it the other day, while catching up on family gossip. We debated over Dr. Gary Chapman’s five codes used in close communication between loved ones:
·         -Use of kind words
·         -Touch
·         -Gifts
·         -Quality time and
·         -Service

These five codes were identified, after studying the problems of thousands of couples who reported these as their main dissatisfactions.

“The gist is..” we all agreed, “..that both, the lover and the loved one, should speak the same language, for fluent communication in a good relationship”.  We came to this conclusion, when we each admitted that our problems communicating with our respective partners, stem from differences in the codes we used;  one partner, trying to show love in a language, misunderstood and rejected by the other. I, for example, show love as my mother did, through ‘service’. However, my ex-husband ( who is still part of our extended family), joined in admitting that the  ‘service’ given as love, made him feel  it was ‘duty’, tending, rather to reject it, because it made him feel guilty.

However, later, while my ex-husband and I walked on the beach, alone, we both agreed that it was not enough for the sender to try to code his message with fine fidelity to his inner authenticity; nor was it enough for the partner to ‘receive’ the message with open acceptance…both had to share their mutual perceptions, distinctly identifying subjective differences, in the exchange. This ‘feedback’ allows for the ‘thesis’ and ‘antithesis’ of their interactive discourse, to re-create synergy in a ‘synthesis’, both can identify and share.

I don´t think this is the only emotional alphabet, in love. Maybe these 5 languages are really ‘channels’ used to transmit our personal ‘coding’ .

 Everyone develops their own alphabet in love, as they each assign personal ‘meaning’ to different ways of transmitting it (channels): the way we touch, the emotions we express, the words we transmit or the  gifts we give. What is important is that love cease to be the abstraction of our mere intention, to become ‘real’ with our manifest ‘actions’, in the present’.

 

Leaning to Love: Meaning

In the beginning was the “Word”; the “Alpha” and “Omega”; the Idea…of God/Love. Then, there was the ‘receptor’ (lat.: re-again; capio/ere- capture); the container; the concept.

If the first idea is God/Love, the conceptual containers are ‘Mothers. This stem-source of Ideas and their manifestations (or better said ‘woman-ifestations’), through concepts, is then divided and subdivided into ‘mesh-words,’ that state shared positions, opinions and stances. Families would be these existential ‘position-statements’. As ideas continue their fissions and fusions into the multiple interpretations among families, we create communities of inter-relatedness. They all require understanding in a common code.

This Spring break, my sisters and I spent time with our Mother, who is still the conceptual mold within our family. If ideas are liquid, she is the container that determines their shape. I confirmed, that the beliefs and meaning that she has given to her ideas, have molded the vessels of understanding in our homes, their rules and the interpretation we all assign, to  Love. It would seem that ideas conceived and spelt out by our Mothers, are the ones that give families their conceptual alphabet. My Mother taught my sisters and me to speak, to listen and to understand both inner and outer dialogue. It is her definitions that give us understanding of life. Even as I teach, I repeat such molding. Thus, mothers are the direct first-line-meaning that we give to words.

During our visit, my Mother urged us to teach our children to read.

“The new generations aren’t reading” she said. “We must insist that they read, so that they can develop the capacity to re-create images and project them in the imagination”.

Reading, undeniably, stimulates neural activity and opens mental maps to new ideas. But I would add…we must teach children to think..to question…to want to ‘know more’; ‘why’; ‘what for’… We must teach them to read ‘vertically’ between the lines, to see what is unseen, to intuit. We must teach them to contemplate and meditate so that they can ‘read meaning’ into their lives and not just read words. We must teach them to contact ideas first-handedly so that they can appropriate their meaning and make concepts of their own.

‘Re-cognizance’ comes when we break out of the molds that define ideas with the concepts created by mothers, and reach out to ideas, first-handedly. When we develop introspection and explore our own understanding, reassigning personal meaning to the ideas we contact, we create new concepts.  Blogs allow for such liberal exploration. They set the matrix for ‘re-presentation’ of ideas, their shared understanding and the possibility or re-creating joint meaning through interactive synergy. On internet, this networking through the ‘web’  creates cohesive bonding within communities of shared understanding.

Although ‘Ideas’ are absolutes, their experiencing is relative and individuated. Blogging gives us each, the opportunity to broaden our outlook to conceive a fuller Truth, through  shared kaleidoscopic ‘realities’. Thus, ideas become more important, even, than ourselves. You and I, and others like us, are all re-creating ideas through our imagination, our subjective interpretation and our personal experiencing, as we fill in the cells of this conceptual ‘Mother Matrix’, in the web. Finding and assigning new meaning to ideas is the revolutionary way to transcend both the literal ‘here and now’ and the local ‘me’. On the blogger, I cease to worry about the roles I have to play and the ‘persona’ I have to be, for acceptance….When I blog, I feel more authentic, because of the freedom to express my ideas.

The meaning we each give these transcendental  ideas, will allow us to re-create concepts and network through bridges of significance, to reach others. Shared understanding is the cohesive link that will transform the world.