The Great Turning

We are all growing and evolving. I just turned 30. I just moved out of the city and into an ecovillage. I have just claimed my life-work as artist, gardener, healer. It's just time to upgrade to a new space. 

All my reflections will now be posted on my website: http://www.createartheart.org. 

Thank you so much for being part of my blogspot journey! 

Love,

Sarah

Compass Check

What do you do with 19 years of love letters to yourself and to God? Had to deal with up more than 30 journals compiled since I was 11 as I let go of clutter and possessions while packing to move out of Metro Manila 

After 18 years of writing in my journal, sustaining the energy to pen in my thoughts and reflections has become a challenge. Because I have been postponing to write for months as I learn to get to know this new mode of communication, I had this growing need to express. 

A shift in language is coming forth. There is this strange lull in my expression process. More and more I am conversing with myself in thought with a growing desire to talk to people directly rather than write. When I was most attuned, I used to converse with people in my dreams with matters they need to share and express to me. Lately, I am learning how immediate synchronicity with intention that manifests immediately in real time which required me to be more mindful and connected with my thoughts. Thus I spoke less and less and wrote less and less. They say the frequency of the time and space waves are making heaps of changes. I would say the same from the inner perspective.

I turned 30 last week. For two years, my life has undergone major earth quakes. A lot of clearing and sifting took place. This is a natural part of entering the 3rd decade as developmental psychologists and even clairvoyants would say. A Saturn Return as some astrologers would call it - a time of disintegration and integration. The great changes from my 28th year up to now was just really part of leaving my youth and entering adulthood.

I entered a big pause. 
This pause led me to deeply reflect on my direction.

After sharing my energies to do arts relief for Typhoon Sendong survivors last January - March in Cagayan de Oro where thousands died and were displaced, I felt the burn out of non-profit work. I realized doing a heart-based process for an INGO like Save the Children took so much energy because of their fast paced and output based intensity. After working for 10 years with the non-profit world and losing all my savings in it, I realized I need to be able to sustain myself while I work for sustainability. 

Many lessons also came forth after this wake up call. I chose not to go to Switzerland for the 2nd year of my Masters program because I felt the call of the earth in so many ways.

After Typhoon Sendong, learnings from years of working for the environmental movement surfaced again. 

If I was focused on conflict and peacebuilding, how can I also share my energies in ecological healing and restoration. Most importantly, should there be a divide in my work in these two fields?

And then it dawned to me. The wisdom of the earth is calling for an integrative approach. What if my theory of change is how we see the earth’s reminder to look at how conflict is also rooted to how we see nature as resource or as source of identity? As resource, most conflicts look at it as a source of unlimited income or power - thus so much violence stems from resource based perspective on nature. As a manifestation of identity, it looks as land, water, minerals as ethnic identity, as nation - thus so much military bases are built, indigenous peoples' death in defense of sacred mountains, so many generations of wars because of fatherland motherland histories that have not been healed and are carried over again and again in new forms of conflict.There has to be some common ground, a common language the earth can heal and help people transcend... the common ground is the soil beneath us, our shared resources, our shared identity with the earth body. ......the environmental component in the peace agendas. I believe its the common ground that can unite all in transcending the barriers. The elements of the earth are the third space where people can dialogue and overcome.

While I ponder on these questions, I decided to move to an ecovillage in Palawan called Maia Earth Village. I wanted to see holistic and integral way of addressing transformation. I realized after all these years, I have been focused so much on the doing and less on the Knowing and Being. For now, the Earth is my school, my Masters degree is documenting and writing 10 years of modules and activities with my self, communities, leaders through artmaking. My intention to continue my Masters Degree is there but for now, essential life questions are needing to be looked at. 

I have lots to share on how my journey from Switzerland has turned out. I went to Sri Lanka to undergo a training on interfaith education for children. I finally fulfilled the dream of doing art with UNICEF. I have shared presence with so many indigenous elders during a 492 year old peace pact reaffirmation and a School of Living Traditions conference on indigenous knowledge, systems, and practices. I shared my experience on art and peacebuilding for the Asia - Europe Alumni University forum on peacebuilding. I did lots and lots of mandalas and art as ritual spaces for indigenous wisdom gatherings and workshops. 

I am coming full circle with my own inner peace while healing with my old childhood wounding. I am now facing a deep process while my mother undergoes her own healing from cervical cancer, an acquired condition from so many unhealed parts of herself as this has never been in my family's genetic history. It is becoming a purging and healing experience. So much life wisdom is flowing.

There’s so many stories to share especially the development of two projects - Project Rainbow and Green Relief Initiative. I will write more soon as soon as I’m done with my portfolio website.
This blog too will change its design and format. How it will look like and how the stories will be shared is still being observed in its highest potential. 

Thank you so much for continuing to witness me in my life journey through this blog. 

Piece by Peace

I've been in the Refusal of the Call recently, a stage in Joseph Campbell's Monomyth particularly with this art for peacebuilding calling as part of my life - work. I felt I could turn it down and I could choose not to do it as I value integrity in my process particularly with inner peace as I come to terms with heavy release and healing work these last two years. 

Children, guided dream messages, and what is possible for new ways of healing and transforming the self, community, and the earth have always been there to remind me that what I need to speak about is already from within - what I experience, what the people I know have already done, and most importantly what important life lessons are there to share about the whole story of creative peacebuilding. 

Up to the last minute resisted but on the day of the talk fully embraced for this has always been not entirely about myself but something bigger at work. I spoke  about Art for Peacebuilding for the Asia - Europe Foundation University Alumni Network's (ASEFUAN) annual conference and meeting last August 1 at the Ateneo de Manila University. 

Here's the link to the conference overview:

11th ASEFUAN Academic Conference and Annual General Meeting: Conflict Transformation and Peaceful Settlement of Disputes in Asia and Europe

Here's the link to the program:
http://www.asefuan.org/docs/agm2012_programme_public.pdf

I felt that talking about art based peacebuilding was not enough. I'm a firm believer of experience in the work. I asked the organizers to allow me to set up an experiential artmaking process. They gladly accommodated my request to be designed alongside their photo exhibit entitled Shared Heritage: As We See It. The photographs are part of a traveling exhibit featuring the works of European and Asian delegates of last year's ASEF University program. 

Alongside, I set up Piece by Peace: Weaving Shared Heritage and Shared Future an interactive "tapestry" making installation.

Piece by Peace is an interactive artmaking installation inspired by the indigenous weaving traditions around the world. Tapestries are transformed into clothing that serve as social and political identities symbolizing uniqueness and diversity. It symbolizes IDENTITY as what causes some conflict in many parts of the world. Reframing this old way into reconnecting to the essence of the cloth as an interwoven process of many elements, it becomes a process that engages more than one person in dialogue with the other. The whole process emphasized Co-Creation within Third Space between Self and Other and Self as Other in a Shared Space. 

Because its a contemporary piece inspired by the traditional craft of weaving, it is a space where Past and Future meet - where Shared Heritage and Shared Future create a Third Space for dialogue. 

Mangyan and Maguindanao weave lead the way to a path of peace, followed by new ways of weaving stories and peacemaking together as symbolized by new patterns (Photo by Louise Far)

A long blank tapestry of boxes divided into two is a continuation of traditional weaves. As visitors of go around the photo exhibits, they will find elements that are a response or symbolic of the photo panels that they can collect and bring into the tapestry. Working as a dyad in front of someone, they start engaging in a dialogue process of artmaking - combining their elements together to create a new mandalic pattern based on the principles of order, balance, and harmony.

Cross-Cultural interaction with natural elements, fabric paint, feathers, leaves, etc. ( Photo by Louise Far)

Gratitude to the dream messages about this tapestry. 

One was of a woman wearing a large cloak with an image of a woman on its design indicating its source from the Talmud. Another was of young people protesting about a violent massacre and their young spokesperson talking about the nature of things and the many layers that provide meaning to it. 

EartHeart Wisdom

That's me near the horizon dancing to the Spring Equinox Sunset at the beach near Maia. A beautiful release after throwing up on the beach as part of my raw food detox. Photo by Doreen Jose

I love this image above. Its exactly how the beach near Maia Earth Village looks like and how a rainbow shone on this part as I was swimming toward shore.

It has been a long journey. The storms have been beautiful and have forced me to stay indoors and lock myself within... and I am I am I am so grateful to the beautiful cave I've lived in for two years now.  The sun is about to shine soon and the rainbow will paint the sky. Painting my cave walls some love and gratitude.





This blog will be transforming as www.eartheartwisdom.com.
My life-work portfolio will be moved to www.createartheart.org.

One Peace at a Time. 

Sprouting.

Giving Birth.

Soon :-)

Aurora

Fetus and Dragon Sunrise,  Palawan 2012

Spiritual growth is so much the artist’s journey. Our inner world is soul art, our lives its heartfelt canvas. Like true artists, we have to find that delicatebalance between willfulness and surrender—whento act, when to still. We have to allow our form tochange as intuition demands. Home is where the art is. Chaotic Magnificence… - Jeff Brown

It's 3 am. I just came out from a bad flu.  My eyes are a bit bruised but I'm wide awake from all the sleeping for the last 3 days to recover. I shouldn't keep my eyes open yet something from the tradition of storytellers that document the stories of humanity urged me to write.

When I was in gradeschool, I used to wake up to a dawn procession called the Aurora which my Lola (grandmother) would join in from her living room. She would light a candle and open her windows. I would stay still in my bed or join her and curl up with her on her rocking chair often in awe at this dawn time ritual with people carrying a statue of Mary with candles, rosary beads, and flowers.

This Aurora ritual has never left me.

In my university days, I would be able to study for my exams with a clear head at this time of dawn after an early evening's rest. Years on, I would find that the best time to work on my paintings is at this beautiful time.

At about 3 am is also the time when I would wake up with deep epiphanies, my own conversations with God. I haven't talked to God lately. I have broken up with him many times over the last two years as I did my inner work. But this early morning, I found myself just like in my early 20s waking up at this time feeling the embrace of the universe. I cried like I never cried before but also just cried like I did before. However this one is new. I was finally releasing deep anger at God.

I once asked elders who God was when I was young and I was warned not to question God's identity as it will be considered blasphemous. Having followed different yoga, tantra, and mystical paths since I was 17, I thought I had some kind of idea who this being was.

Who is God is a clear voice within me now ungraspable but graspable. But that's just who s/he is as s/he has always been. Sometimes this is a love-hate relationship. I hate the silence. I loved the signs. I hate the new direct messages. I love the affirmations. I hate the dark night of the soul. I loved the epiphanic break throughs like this one. Just like this - heart opening, tear-jerking release. It's a dance of call and answer.

Maybe its the chaotic magnificence as Jeff Brown says. Maybe its kundalini rising as my friend and inner dance teacher Pi would say. All I know is that its all part of my own shifting. I have to thank myself for the huge leaps I've done over the last two years. Saturn return: your orbiting journey is almost done.

I haven't been awake at this time with a good rest behind me. Most often lately its the time that I would catch some sleep. It's really a nice feeling to be in this peaceful zone. While studying an introduction to the I-Ching and oriental cosmology, I learned that this time is the spring time where wood energy prevails, a time that monks find best to wake up and meditate. The day actually begins here.

Maybe this is a trailmarker for a new day. 3 days of flu broken at 3 am on the 3rd day.
Not bad for a mini resurrection.

But then again, everyday, we die and get reborn again. It's a matter of how much one pays attention to this process. It may not be related but it's interesting how the recent shootings in Aurora, Colorado showed the Dark Knight movie. Maybe its saying that the dark night comes in tandem with the breaking of dawn.

Many say we are entering a time of great change and this change involves all these inner shiftings and lots and lots of dark nights. It is in these dark times when we are meant to shine our light for ourselves and for everybody.

Taking it one rebirth at a time.

“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.” - Rabindranath Tagore

This large angel cloud appeared above Sunday's prayer vigil in Aurora, Colorado. Photo by Crystal Fuller as shared by
Angel Intuitive Doreen Virtue

_____________
Now as Jack Kornfield says "After Ecstacy, the Laundry" : What to do with 3 days of backlog to wrap up an aid report, prepare for an international conference, and finish a mural for a streetchildren shelter?

Bathala Na. Bathalanawa.

Seeds of Dreams

I was going through my Father's stash of photos today while celebrating his birthday at his new house. Found these 3 photos that I've been looking for memorable snapshots of.

It was only when I got home that I realized the significance of these 3 images. I'd love to believe that the seeds of dreams have been planted more than 2 decades ago shaping the path leading me to a life work of art within the earth and heart :-)

Heart Angel for Flores de Mayo (1985), Earth worker harvesting beans at my mother's farm (1985), Little Artist  on my first  painting workshop (1988)

My Feet as Compass

When we walk like (we are running), we print anxiety and sorrow on the earth. We have to walk in a way that we only print peace and serenity on the earth... Be aware of the contact between your feet and the earth. Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh ~

Two weeks ago, I joined the 3rd Kapwa Conference. It was an international gathering and symposium for Schools of Living Traditions and an academic conference on indigenous knowledge, systems, and practices. This was held at Baguio City, Philippines from June 25-July 2. 

The view from my apartment facing the Alpine Glaciers from last year's summer program (L)
The beautiful Baguio horizon, pine trees, plus freezing hands and feet (uncaptured) (R) 

Upon arriving, I immediately got the cosmic joke - I was in a parallel dimension! There are important reasons behind why I was in a gathering of indigenous elders, wisdom and culture bearers, artists, and healers and not in my Graduate School's campus on the Alpine mountains for the 2nd year of my Masters summer program. I am in the process of outlining them out for formal purposes (updating my donors and supporters for one) but the pine trees and the freezing mountain weather were enough to remind me about my true intentions for being where I was and not somewhere else. Knitted mittens, layered clothing; pine trees; and staying at a European styled apartelle were enough to tell me there is no difference: both places taught about transformation inside the earth, heart, and art school - only that its taught by ancient wisdom bearers 6 hours ahead and probably hundreds of feet lower in altitude. 

On the last day of the conference, a gathering of organizers, volunteers, and guests took place at the house of one of the conference co-founders- the amazingly inspiring Katrin de Guia. An inspiring speaker and advocate of indigenous knowledge applied in expressive arts therapy Mila Anugluan- Coger led a circle of dreamweaving as we shared our reflections together. Looking back, it was healing for me to participate in this circle and interact with her as she is taking her Ph.D in Expressive Arts Therapy at Lesley University where most of my professors at the European Graduate School teach too. So it also felt that I was still in the same classroom up in Switzerland despite that I was really thousands of miles away. 

Together as a circle, we did some toning and came up with a beautiful spirit song which I recorded for us to remember by. 






Escaping to a garden outside the house, I spent some time to put into words what I experienced. I ended up finding a perfectly shaped circle blister on my left foot and drew a red simple mandalic flower sun design around it. Perhaps it was truly what "embodied knowing," an indigenous wisdom in practice, truly meant. The sacred most often speaks in symbols first then it is our human gifts that shape them into language, culture, and meaning. I honor the sacred wisdom the unspoken is "trying to say." Maybe I'll let my feet do the talking :-)

To this day, I am still listening on how to put my reflections and learnings to share together. This is starting to become more of a normal process for me after a deeply moving experience. It's not about being with more than 30 tribes from all over my country and around the world that dumbfounded me but its about how our shared humanity and shared divinity reflected through the universal yet uniquely expressed symbols, myths, metaphor and  wisdom continue to reveal themselves in my thoughts and interactions with nature, conversations, places up to now. In short, its speaking to me in so many levels particularly about how and where my life-work will take shape. Maybe that's what the message of the circular blister on my left foot is about. I'm still boggled as to why my right foot doesn't have one as I was wearing a matched pair of hiking sandals the whole time. Interestingly, my left foot bears my  only birthmark: some brown freckled speckles sprinkled across my foot. Perhaps this is a mythological Achilles heel story that I have yet to discover.

Time is also a factor for the sharing while I balance my commitments with packing (or rather unpacking as I'm letting go of so many things and attachments (materially and metaphorically) for Maia Earth Village. I have to finish a temp job for a bilateral aid program to support me financially. Most urgently, I am preparing for a presentation and an interactive art installation on art and peacebuilding for an upcoming 11th ASEFUAN Annual Academic Conference and General Meeting on Conflict Transformation and Peaceful Settlement of Disputes in Asia and Europe in August.

So for now, I'm sharing photos of my beautiful experience through this Facebook Album: Kapwa Dreamweaving and this beautiful video of Maria Oyog Todi, a T'boli elder and culture bearer guiding me and a Japanese guest on how to dance their dance. The T'bolis were one of the first indigenous groups that inspired me about the sacred process of artmaking. Weavers wait for a dream to guide them on a design to be woven on their Tinalak cloth. Thus, they are called "Dreamweavers." 

Maybe the feet's message was made for dancing first! More deep reflections to come. 

Dreamweaving Part 1

This originally started as a post to update my Dream Projects page and it ended up as another river of words about life and art.


I love dreaming out loud. After months of not updating the Dream Section section of my blog, I finally had time and inspiration to declare my dreams again. My first instinct was to dive into a long, long list of what I want to do. I had to stop myself and take long walks before I got to the moment of writing these down. 

For years I usually manifest things this way: I make lists. I do some mapping. I day dream. Sometimes I self sabotage then I retrieve the dream again in a heroine's dramatic mode. Afraid of losing my chances, I jump on every opportunity that comes my way.

It must be growing older and having faced a lot of that inspired me to slow down and to transform the way I embody the role of being an artist. What is clear right now is working on  Creativity and Dreaming. 

On Creativity

As my art evolves, I am more and more focused on the word CREATIVITY and the process of CREATION and CO-CREATION. The word "art" now becomes a piece of creativity manifested. But if you ask me, I would rather use the word CREATION. 

In my local language (Tagalog), we refer to art as "sining" and it is used in a broad context to embody a practice that involves visual arts, music, dance, and literature; unlike the popular use of the word in English to exclusively refer to the visual art forms compartmentalized from music, literature, etc.  

In tagalog, there is no verb in reference to artmaking. We use the word creation to describe an active form of artmaking through the word "paglikha." This comes from root word "likha" or creation. A creative person is called "malikhain." Creativity is "pagkamalikhain." We refer to God as "Manlilikha" or Creator. Unless referred to the medium one does "painter - pintor, music - musikero, etc.," the general term for artist is also called "manlilikha." Artmaking therefore is a sacred process, a shared Divine experience. There is no word for co-creation implying that it is integrated in any creative endeavor. One beautiful word I love using when designing or conducting a workshop is the Tagalog version of Facilittor which is "Taga-pagpadaloy." It literally means - "one who flows."

Tagalog means Taga-Ilog: One who is from the River, who lives by the river

On Dreaming

I love this word. Dreaming is a creative process considering its two beautiful ways of usage : a real life movie from the subconscious as we sleep and an active process of visioning what is to come. 

Sacred texts and mythological stories across cultures involve turning points with dreams. For many of my country's indigenous weavers like the T'bolis, dreams are considered as bearers of images or messages for an upcoming weaving design. Life is guided by Dream Time. 


For many inventors, innovators, evolutionaries, light workers, and agents of transformation - the vision goes hand in hand with dreaming. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said those beautiful powerful lines four decades ago which we can now thread towards Barrack Obama, the first African American President of the United States of America. Imagination is held by dreams that help transform or manifest from what has passed and what is currently present.

So where doe these two words bring me now?

Where I am as an artist and light and life worker is about expanding into the how creative elements: medium, process, and message come into integration. 

I have always been a dreamer and I am still learning how to align with my birth vision to manifest my intentions to reality. This is all part of the co-creative process we are beautifully gifted with as human yet divine beings. I believe that the manifestation starts with a dream that has the potential to flow through our bodies and with the right people, places, and circumstances around us. 

The dream makes itself known with a seed, a big bang, a light bulb, an awakening moment... Eureka! Now I know yet I don't know. Wisdom speaks in paradox yet speaks clearly only with simple elementary words. Maybe I should stop philosophizing on how to end this post. For now, it just is. The dreaming continues beyond this sentence's period.

Rainbow Cocoon

Hello from Singapore! I am in awe of this beautiful garbage can painted by a child at one of the city's beautiful train stations. Of all the beautiful public art in the streets and the tapestry of heritage and contemporary pieces in the beautiful museums, this is the best creation so far.

There are truly a lot of words to share about this Summer Solstice week. I am still in deep listening about what is being revealed for sharing.  I am here on a free vacation from my brother whom I am helping out a bit for his advertising work. (Not so secretly, I'm on a "secret" mission to influence him on my inner hippie wisdom and making sure he doesn't become a carbon guzzling capitalist.)

There's a lot to say because right now I'm supposed to be transiting from Tanzania to Switzerland for a conference on interreligious dialogue, children, and poverty to my next summer program at my graduate school's campus on the Alpine mountains. 

This 180 degree move was brought about by my need to stay rooted this year: move to Maia, plant, sow, grow, harvest and be the mandala. 

But since travel has been already scheduled for a year now for the original intentions, it still had to take form and manifest. So my body had to ride a plane and fly. And so no matter how I tried to avoid the plane, here I am typing on my laptop thousands of miles away from my country.

Where I am is like having this beautiful trash can as a cocoon for almost a year now. I am being reminded by the innocence of children to keep to the essence of my journey and where my eternal inner work is leading me. They say its the Saturn Return that I'm in the eye of (Finally a universal validation!). I must say its pretty much a confirmation of all the peeling of layers that have taken place in my life for the last 2 years. 

But this is what the essence of a rainbow's message is telling me - after the rains, a message of hope will paint this beautiful oracle in the sky. 

I could have been this caterpillar inside the trash all this time that never knew that a child painted this magical message of hope outside me. It took some time to realize that it has always been there even in the darkest of days. Much like how it is in the trash can in this photo, I had to see this from a perspective outside of my cocoon. This speaks of the essence of awareness as reaching the state of seeing beyond One's Self.

This only means that I am about to move on to the next stage of metamorphosis. 

More to share soon.

The Peace of I: Zero as Circle

 The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes from within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men." - Black Elk                                                                        

Since this will be the first of a series of eartheart reflections called The Peace of I,  I started with a quote that talks about the first peace. I love this Native American wisdom and the cosmology of all indigenous belief systems around the world that sees the circle that connects all life to the self and the self to all of life. I feel so blessed having met a lot of mentors and guides from around the world who are guided by indigenous wisdom and practice. Words are not enough.

I walked around town today in a beautiful skirt with blemishes all over my legs from mosquitos and sandflies in Palawan and fresh break outs from emotional and partial raw food detox and PMS. And no matter how everything is chaotic outside, inside me is this lush of green plants sprouting from my heart. Just today, I couldn't wait to leap out of the jeepney and run home to dance under the rain when the sky broke loose this afternoon.

My room is still a mess and I have finally accepted that it will never be clean anymore until the last box is packed and shipped to Maia next week. Being with a lot of discomfort and emotional purging these last month in Manila was an invitation to mindfully discern what cleaning really truly means.

Palawan : As Above, So Below

On my plane on way back to Manila from 2 months in Mindanao and Palawan, I leafed through the first few pages of the book Zero Limits by Joe Vitale and Hew Len. It's interesting thinking that with all these years hearing about this book and the Ho'oponopono philosophy and practice, this book will find me or I, it at Maia's library. Unlike in my early twenties wherein I would scout for rare finds at used book stores, nowadays, I let a book find me. I'd love to believe that finding a perfect book is like a destined relationship between seeker and message bearer in alignment of perfect timing, just like opening a book randomly to read on a powerful message divinated just for you to read at that particular moment.

Had I read it before, I wouldn't have taken it with this much resonance.

I could swear that I was ready to die while reading it. My body was in a state of lightness that I could just merge with the clouds and surrender to heaven as if it was these cloud formations artists and seers have rendered as the eternal place after death. 

But that didn't prepare me for the deep cleanse that would take place next. 

Fast forward to a month of deep questioning and peeling of layers, the chaos inside me prompted me to look into how I show up as a peacemaker in my life. A friend of 10 years challenged me about my work in peacebuilding for the last 4 years. All ancient teachings, religious and spiritual traditions teach the essence of peace.  I should know this from my work in interfaith dialogue and sacred practices.

Yet, I still don't know. In the sense that knowing is wisdom in practice. 

I am in mindful awareness of the need to heal my wounds so I can fully forgive someone and this keeps me vulnerable to woundology, a state of being stuck in victim mentality as medical intuitive Carolyn Myss would put it. This paradox is an ongoing journey of embodying this beautiful Peace of I. The true knowing lies in the Wu-Wei, the practice of doing yet not doing in all conditions good or bad. 

A month later since, I feel I am now about to dock port from a ship that sailed me through the eye of the storm of purging experience of letting go and forgiveness work. At least, I'd love to believe, I am in my next destination or trailmarker after dancing with Venus as she transited around the sun yesterday.

I dug through my box of journals (God knows how I'm going to transfer this big box to Maia) to find my journal from June of 2004 when the last transit took place.

I found a small notebook that I wrapped with black cloth and hand painted with a moon and a flower. By the cover alone anyone could tell that this was one of my dark periods. I was 21 about to turn 22 by this time and I was working at a prestigious museum about to open its new building at the business district. I was still in love with this artist whom I chose to stop seeing the year before and weeks later he would invite me to his exhibit opening which I will end up not going to.@ I was writing down ideas for new paintings. I tried yoga asanas practice for the first time and I was going to turn a year old as vegetarian the next month. 

I found this in one of my entries and honestly felt this was the lightest writing so far. I don't even know if I wrote it anymore. It could be a quote that I copied from a book. But I remember the days I would climb up the roofdeck of the apartment building I lived alone in and stand up on the ledge to feel the breeze and write. Almost all of my entries in this journal wrote about the wind. 

The winds howl like the sea. I woke up as if I lived right next to the ocean. The leaves dance as the wind tickles them. They make such beautiful noise. I feel like I'm on a ship and I'm sitting on my balcony - above deck. Perhaps time travels faster when the clouds run- as if the earth spun at a faster rate - dancing. I want to dance with the wind. I'm beginning to think that where I live is not too bad after all. I stood up for around ten minutes and saw an almost perfect picture of the sunset with a block of square in the middle. But it was 11 minutes of God. I'm going to try my best to fight sadness - instead, I will make each day extra ordinary. 

On June 8, 2004 on the day of the first transit in our present generation,  I pasted a print out of Oriah Mountain Dreamer's well loved poem called "The Invitation." My friend Reena gave it to me. When I saw this the other day 8 years later to Venus' twin transit, it warmed my heart because I realized I was really this fragile and hopeless romantic person back then (I really hope no one gets to read these journals someday!). I read this poem as if I were speaking to a forever absent lover. 

It's beautiful how the video above accompanies the poem with the Buddhist mantra Om Mani Padme Hum that bows to the higher self.

On the eve of the recent Venus transit, I read this out loud and dedicated it to myself as a way of coming full circle from the first one and allowed myself to flow tears of liberation. On the morning of the transit, I found myself waking up from a dream of being with an abuser with my higher self intervening showing me my book of life about the spiral dance. I got up and lit a candle and let this float with a flower on a bowl of water in the middle of our stone mandala sacred space, cleaned the toilet mindfully, and took a loving beautiful shower. I dedicated these water blessings to the Lighting the Lights Ceremony by the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers who made a call for wisdom bearers around the world to hold a ceremony for water and Mother Earth through their WaterSongLine project. In the evening, I joined a Tibetan Buddhist ceremony with a visiting Karmapa and had my hair cut by him as part of my symbolic refuge to my own awakening. 

Walked around 3x around this stupa - like Mandala after the 17th Karmapa's lecture on the eve of the transit.

These rituals are just external things that helped remind me of the significance of my turning points within just like any other ritual that I have partaken in. Nothing about it is outside of myself. The symbols, the chants, the ecstatic experiences - they're there to help one connect my heart to the realm of all things. 

The other day, I looked at the mirror and for the first time, I stared deeply into my eyes and went inside the circle within the circle. I asked myself: "What do I really know about alchemy?"And hours after, a wise elder who was also a peaceworker from another part of the world whom I have never conversed with privately before messages me and asks me, "What is alchemy?" That same day, I had several synchronicities about shamanic plant medicine that connects one to other states and planes. It's interesting that I find these uncanny revelations very new every time it happens even if this has happened several times over the course of my life so far. 

The Peace of I, a state of Zero brings all these synchronicities about that bring one in alignment to one's sacred purpose or birth vision. I believe anyone can access this. We all have this beautiful capacity and potential to create magic and miracles in our lives. Conscious transformation is a process of clearing that takes place before this state can be reached. To the Ho'oponopono practice, its clearing with apology, gratitude, forgiveness, and love (I'm Sorry, Please Forgive Me, Thank you, I Love You) to everyone and everything that takes place in one's awareness. These words are really the essence of all religions and sacred practices - love, compassion, forgiveness, transcendence, awakening, enlightenment, ascension. 

Most of the time we are focused on the envisioned state of bliss and enlightenment that we shun away all the negative experiences that take place on the road to this. It's how our society has created pill popping to muffle out illness, or strange behavior. We are so afraid of revealing our woundedness afraid of being judged that we forget to realize that illness is part of our body and spirit's way of clearing. Our body is so wonderfully perfect in all its functions that no quantum science can still fathom its extreme capacities and potentials. To encounter illness or states of dis-ease is part of the body's way of saying this is not really who you are so I will clean it out for you. To many medical intuitives, physical illnesses are a result of unaddressed emotional issues which they can see clearly in the parts of the body that need healing. Even beyond that is an astral or spiritual misalignment but that's an entirely different topic. The important thing is that awareness and acceptance that there is something that needs to be cleared and in the process honoring its dark, painful journey just as one would in a state of bliss. 

All shamans know this.

The shamanic processes bridge the seen and the unseen realms. To access this, all shamans undergo transformation, at least all the shamans and healers that I know of who really undergo death and rebirth (even the actual physical death). Their participation in the relationship between the seen and unseen and what they have control of and what they do not is true alchemy. I'm no shaman but all of us who consciously go through our own transformation and the bridging of what has been to what is yet to be are shamans in some way or another. 

Right now my process is this mindful moment to moment state of clearing of emotional baggages as I segreggate possessions to give away and to asses what is truly essential to keep. It's waking up everyday in a pile of boxes and old things or see another acne pop up with the inner knowing this is a beautiful part of my own alchemic transformation. I needed this affirmation to come from my own self saying, "I am in a perfect state right now." Seeing it as it is in deep observation helps prepare the way for clearing. At this point, this is where the alchemic process truly begins.

I want to end with sharing that I finally was able to finish the learning guide manual I was designing for Save the Children and Kids for Peace Foundation for Typhoon Sendong survivors a day before the transit. It was only fitting to wrap it up with the very first module I designed on children's coping and reactions based on the story of metamorphosis. Back then it was so impromptu as an interactive storytelling process that helped children identify feelings so I was not able to write it down. As a child I was always inspired by the book "Hope for the Flowers" by Tina Paulus and it was the first inspiration for this story. At the core, it is my own experience that brought it forth (Yes I am Yellow!). I have entitled it "The Magical Cocoon" and it tells the story of a caterpillar (whose name will be up to the children listening) who went to the unknown trusting the light s/he has within. The cocoon is that state of mixed emotions and disempowerment that take place after being displaced from a disaster. It can also be the evacuation center itself and uncertainty of how one's life can go back to normal. I still feel that it needs more tweaking but for now, its perfect as it is. Perhaps when I find the time, or when time finds me, I will really make an illustrated storybook out of it.

A small mandala I found by the Cagayan river during one of our site visits. This is the same river that swelled up and overflowed displacing hundreds of thousands and killing more than a thousand people along the Cagayan and Iligan Rivers last December 2011. 

I dedicate this to Bane Agbon and the ChildHeal Facilitators of Kids for Peace Foundation who invited me to share my learnings and ideas about integral well-being, expressive and transformative arts to their project with Save the Children. Up to now, I still cary this guilt that I could have done better or I could have just forced myself.  It was a long process of self forgiveness after I wrapped up my contract early as consultant and battled with my deadlines that I so often missed. I realized, I couldn't work in a large INGO system with fast paced demands requiring the delivery of many key messages in a very short time in a mass produced scale. I have deep respect and appreciation for the staff for their dedication because they still did what was needed to be done with thousands of children in immediate need. I realized I was knee deep in my inner work process too be healthy enough to dive in to the heavy demands of their work and this caused my burn out. Was I too idealistic to integrate whole systems approach in a process that just needed one aspect addressed immediately? I still wonder. But right now, I am just so grateful for all the learnings that I realized about my idealism and about simplicity. Tailor fitting my crazy art ideas that were adapted from my work with small communities into a limited time table, materials, manpower, and energy - not to mention more than two thousand children was not easy for a first timer in a major post emergency situation. It was totally different from our arts relief work with Typhoon Ondoy as I was merely working as volunteer artist. This time, the task to oversee the entire design of the modules and its implementation with an integral well-being framework became overwhelming with the intensive requirements of the funders. I sincerely appreciate all the patience and trust this organization has given me. I still hope I can learn from this further and maybe prepare much better in the future for this kind of work. 

Kids for Peace Foundation is a non-profit founded by Rosan Aliya Agbon who was 12 years old during an all out war in 2000 by the Philippine Government against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. It was her dedication to bring children's voices in times of conflict that continue to inspire me and many leaders in our work for peace. I was introduced to their organization after the Lights for Peace ritual I co-created with artist friends and 400 interfaith public school children for the resumption of the Peace Talks between the Philippine Government and the MILF last year. 

Of Cracking Eggs and Evolutionary Relationships

This Is A Diamond

It is clear that This
is a Diamond.
Multifaceted. Faces of God.

Each time I see you now
I have only two choices:
break open
or
openly break.

How can I explain This?
It might be easier
if we
leave the castle
climb the walls
enter the city
and let Our Love be made
in

All of God's streets.

‘This Is A Diamond’ – Em Claire ©2007 – All Rights Reserved

People usually think I'm this ultra wise person because of my spiritual practices and contemplative creative life-work. The truth is, I'm also this simple girl who has real issues to deal with. Like, I don't know, say maybe, Love? 

Particularly a romantic relationship between man and woman.

As a mandala artist, being in a romantic relationship with someone has been a great process of union, separation, and integration.

First, because the mandala helped heal my PTSD from a former partner who had his own wounding issues. 

Second, the mandala helped revive in me a deep relationship I have always had with the dream world and my own birth vision manifested through this sacred art form in relationship with someone two years ago. 

I am not expecting you to figure these two out as its something I'm not confident to share about in public. I can't really explain the details of these awakening affinities but the deep process of letting go of deep patterns of co-dependence and attracting men who clearly wanted something else (or most of the time someone else) these last two years is turning out to be one of the healthiest things I have done in my entire life. 

Joseph Campbell said, "Destruction before creation."

It's the egg's breaking before the yolk is brought out that brings about creation (but yes, it is also a hearty breakfast my love). After all, the entire universe required that friction and the chaos brought about by the collision of energy that formed matter. This human being, 80% galactic dust, is a product of the dance of form and flow of opposing forces.

But that doesn't mean creation's dance to give birth to itself and these wonderful creatures we call ourselves is not painful. 

It's Osho meets Buddha. Tantra meets Yoga kind of thing. Until it spirals out of the marriage and separation of flow and form, its what humans call a "break-up."

A big BANG.

The other night, I was in one of those late night taxi rides with old love songs are on full blast and I just  wanted to break into a musical to laugh at myself because its painful to realize how much I do still miss someone. 

Packing my stuff in boxes again. It's officially a regular ritual for me every two years ever since I was probably born. 

But in the spirit of growing up and turning 30 in a few months, something just needs to be unfurled, unwired, unfolded, untangled.

To dance like the spiraling of a galaxy.

Suddenly it dawned on me that I was afraid of commitment myself that's why I was attracting partners who were just the same. Despite the opposing forces of yin and yang, there is that magnetic factor of sameness. 

…I had just come back from my walk yesterday and I was glancing through one of your books when out fluttered a picture of you. You looked maybe 15-gaunt and haunted. Realizing how much I loved you, I burst into tears. I have not told you a hundredth of what I hold in my heart for you. I know that your journey has reached a turning point and I want to give you strength. I have loved you since I was 13, when I first saw your hand move across that sheet of paper. I have loved you in every manner my imagination could contrive. I have wanted you so deeply that my body sang with pain and pleasure. You have become my obsession, my passion, my philosopher’s stone of fantasy. You are my desire, my longing, my spirit. I love you unconditionally. Do you hear me, Griffin? Do you see that I cherish you beyond question, that you have nothing to prove to me? You are making your journey to secure yourself. I am already tethered to your side. If you can love yourself as I love you there will be no dislocation- you will be whole. Bring yourself home to me and I will immerse you in every ounce of tenderness I possess. 

Sabine. 

When I was 14, I had a dream of someone whom I cannot describe here. And he remains to be a mystery up until now. God I hope he's not an alien. This person's mysterious presence appears over and over again in my dreams and in the love stories I'm drawn to. Like this cult classic story of Griffin and Sabine which I read as a 21 year old. 

When I was 21, I met this wonderful artist and so the story goes.

Today he's married and he has a kid.

Suddenly it came rushing one by one: I loved movies of revival after long separations, affairs, and even a supposed happy ending yet the lover has terminal illness. All these years I have been idealizing Sartre and de Beauvoir; Gibran and Haskell; and yeah, Griffin and Sabine. All these years, I would turn down friendships by men who seemed to have no issues or problems and were likely to be committed and loyal.

Is it really a star-crossed pattern for all creative relationships? Is creation an eternal process of union and separation?

Was I dooming myself with all this drama?

Warning: this musing might sound like a postmodern American comedy in a TV series but it's not. Come to think of it, we Filipinos talk like this in our heads (If you got that, you shouldn't be surprised why I used "eggs" instead of "balls" for this blog's title)

I'm not writing this because most of friends my age are already married and with children. When my mom was my age now, I was 4 and she just gave birth to her 3rd child. Things are perfect the way it was as it brought me to life this way. But I can't imagine myself as a parent right now. Not primarily because of the uncertainty of nuclear warheads ready to strike or the peak oil doom but because I want to be ready and clear. I want to be this wonderful mother who had her true adventure and self discovery  on her own eventually to meet someone who has also done his inner work himself.

Which brings me to this: I am writing this because all this packing up is asking me to no longer carry what is not helping grow and evolve.

And because its part of my creative process.

This used to be a romantic memory but sometimes, I'd like to pretend this is me stomping on his feet with force. 

My co-creative journey with my former partner was a beautiful and profound one. When that went away because I chose to leave the relationship: I wasn't ready and he was still working on his own commitment issues - I was afraid to co-create again. 

Not even with just a man but even with everybody. 

I was afraid to teach mandalas again. Afraid that people will use my ideas. Just like a former partner is using my ideas through an art project with this new girl.

But what does it mean when I say MY ideas?

That's an ongoing existential process for me... for my work with the sacred arts involves my surrender to be a channel of the Source of true creativity. 

Isn't this the eternal question of every artist who lives his/her entire life in the service of Creation?

But yes, I am human too. (I say that with a non - E.T. crop-circle fanatic tone)

I'd love to be with someone I can truly co-create with. Someone I am healthy with. Someone I am wise with. Someone I can journey the world with to explore mandalas further. Sure, someone who would love to send me letters too (but just to me not like someone I dated who writes all the girls he has the hots with); and yes, someone who would understand and love my run-on sentences.

I'm just kidding.

Well, yeah it's true. 

Nowadays, its ok to be jaded. It's ok to sing goofy love songs out loud to release some unresolved sarcasm. It's ok to wish that any guy I meet will not be attracted to me for now (or the other way around). It's ok not to look good for a man and have break outs while my body releases all the toxins because of raw food. If he doesn't get that, then he's not the one.

But who is THE ONE?

A Jungian would interpret Griffin and Sabine as the union of the Anima and the Animus... the integration of polarities, archetypes : East - West; Light - Dark; and yes, Man-Woman.

One is a pretty big number if you think of it in the language of Oneness.

I used to be in a Oneness campaign with this guy. But when this died out, I started doubting about Oneness. Referring to it like a greenwashing campaign. It's as if it was easy to be one with everybody. Sometimes you have no money, sometimes you can't express yourself, sometimes nobody understands you, sometimes the man you think you still love is just with someone great right now.

Yet here I am packing up to move into an intentional community that has Oneness as its vision.

Between that point of disillusionment about Oneness to the point of readily letting go of prestigious opportunities (even to announce that I am truly single and available), to go to a Oneness community was this:

the mandorla experiment

This liminal almond space between two circles: a Vesica Piscis, or popularly known as a Mandorla. This point between two circles, the point between humanity and divinity, the point between what is inner and outer. The transcendent space between happiness and sadness. This is the point of meditating what is true or not.

Which brings me to this question: What is True love?

Perhaps my thousands of years - old soul is still learning that. Which is why I'm still here, right?

But you know, one thing I am learning about the quest for true love:

It is the story of God and humanity. 

Eve must be the entire earth this Man is sitting on. Ah yes she's everywhere around God the Father :-)

It's the story of separation from what originally was, and the evolution towards what it is becoming... which is the pure essence of what it was in the first place.

My teachers have taught this over and over again: When you realize that God is within you, you will no longer need to find that outside of you.

I'd like to believe that my journey to Oneness, hell, perhaps my journey to meet the One, requires this Oneness with my Self.

I'm just honoring my space of self love and self forgiveness. I'd love to do this first before I can truly be happy for him and start telling him why it went wrong even if I scream at him so he can no longer do this mistake with this person he's with if this person is really truly making him happy. Because that's what love is right? And that also means, I deserve that kind of love too from someone who really wants to be with me.

But yes, I'd love to believe he was a beautiful and wonderful person on the inside out. He taught me ultimate courage and adventure, qualities my fear - oriented self who grew up with a wounded childhood has been trying to learn all these years.  He taught me to be my authentic self as he has always been deeply honest with his weaknesses and foolishness. I didn't realize there was great wisdom with that until now when I am revealing myself naked this way. Because of my constant fear of him always flirting with someone else, I came to realize how much I didn't love myself to be confident enough to be secure with my own beauty. Most importantly, to love myself enough to feel deserving of someone who didn't need to desire someone else. This at the same time respecting the kind of journey to love he finds self actualization from no matter how different it is from mine. For we are all, yes that includes you, just needing to experience love the way we want to.

This is probably going to take time. Much longer than it took you to reach this part of my public monologue. Maybe I am not that evolved yet as much as I wish I could be like how he can manage being subscribed to my facebook updates because I deleted him. Maybe 10 years from now, my children will find this facebook reference as old school as Khalil Gibran's and Mary Haskell's letters. What's next could be something as complicated as rocket science or my growing obsession on how one can be a hippie yet a hipster at the same time. If you don't get that, that's basically the point if I speak from the state of projection and sarcasm.

The truth is, if I speak from clarity and wisdom, the point is this:

A mandala is born from a point that danced to become a circle. From that point on, that mighty dot that started it all became the heart of things and the core of integration. And the heart, is where all things boil down to.

He was my complete opposite and that broke us apart but led us to a deepening of what really truly makes us whole (at least I hope it has led him to that). We are mandala artists after all.

Maybe this point of clarity in authentic happiness for my freedom with equal regard for his newfound joy with someone else will reveal itself soon or not. But this is the point wherein miracles happen, when I learn to let go of expectations (including that obsession with that dream years ago or even the idea of being with someone again) and just truly work from the yolk within - one sunny side up at a time (or in my case once I settle at  Maia where I am abstaining from this amazing comfort food and maybe any romantic relationship: magical healing from buko juice from one hacked coconut at a time).

This will be my true love story : My Dearest Sarah... Love, Sarah

So for now... just as it has been before and will always and forever be...
THIS IS LOVE: 

" to fly toward a secret sky,  

to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. 

First to let go of life.                                                                                                        

Finally, to take a step without feet." 

This "my Beloved," Rumi reminds me, is to really be TRUE LOVE. 

It's time to let go and fly.

Sagada

In loving gratitude to R, with whom I've shared love, shadow work, crazy dreams, heartaches, deep seated anger, mandalas, and important evolutionary wisdom with:

May we never forget the relational and co-transformative nature of human expansion. Although the ultimate romance is with your own soul, it is our experiences together that give birth to the essential lessons. We are each here to participate in this dance of sacred imagination, stepping on each other’s toes and turning each other toward God one clumsy step after another. We trip, and then we get back up with greater awareness. With this in heart, I am hopeful that we can learn to accept one another in our humanness. We are going to continue to make mistakes, but there is grace in that if we see our errors through to the lessons they contain. - Jeff Brown (from Apologies to the Sacred Masculine)