“LOVE is elicited in therapy, in medicine, and in education by the caring conversation, the intimate confessions, and by the listening alone. Listening to another and caring for their welfare can be such a comforting experience that the magic aureole of love descends when no one is looking….Love takes us out of life and away from the plans we have made for our lives. To give oneself over to love and marriage is to say yes to death. Submission entails a loss in life, but there is also a gain for the soul. The loss of will and control one feels in love may be highly nutritious for the soul.” – Thomas Moore, Care of The Soul, 1992.
Are you frozen in love? That you look forward to getting up in the morning to see this person? That you cannot wait to see her the next day? That all you can think of after she leaves is to share how alive she is? That all day yesterday, it was about reading books? How she keeps pulling out the book of numbers and we can go over these books ten to fifteen times.
Yesterday, the number two fascinated her and she made the peace sign. Oh my!
Today, the number three is her focus and she points to three lines, three vacant spaces on her chair.
Did I miss this when I was raising my children that now, every step of my apo, I am able to see? Was I blind then? Or was my heart not at peace?
Hearts in chaos, after a loss
To suffer a loss gets a heart into chaos. Once at peace, all seems to unravel.
You get a flash of your life with that person, in my case, the death of my mother, Asuncion Abarquez, on March 18, 2016. What has been my life with her, what she was as a mother, and how I may understand the circumstances of how she strongly took on her roles, not with might, but with determination, with inner strength, with fortitude and with a strong faith in God.
Still, with only an idea of what she went through, the five of us sisters, wish for more time and for clearer revelations.
But, we cannot, and each one has a different way of grieving that our eldest Ate Rose gave us a great theme for our conversations, “We can be hearts at peace or hearts at war.”
In reading Michael A. Singer’s “The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself”, his premise is that “Wise beings do not want to remain a slave to the fear of pain.”
Essentially, he looks at pain as simply a flow of energy, let it flow through you, like other forms that you come across in any given moment: frustration, anger, fear, insecurity, jealousy or embarrassment.
By simply watching how these feelings move through your being, and completely “feeling” these emotions, without pushing them away, you experience freedom — to simply relax your heart and release. Singer encourages us to simply “go into the roots of the pain” and see where it leads us.
I did that one evening, sitting with my pain over the loss of my mother, and discovered that the pain of being abandoned came down to a day in the playground. It got me thinking about a pain that happened over five decades ago, as it was time to release all remnants of that day’s memory in my heart’s space.
It is not even important anymore as here I am alive. More than merely surviving, I am thriving, thanks to my supportive family and my friends, including my best buddy, my apo, my grandchild.
Compared to keeping the blueprint of this pain and then, having it grow to an overgrown painful body with legs and feet (which unconsciously gains a new life), the merits of living in the present, filled with joy and filled with anticipation for my one-year-old grandchild, is a much better bargain.
Two days before I buried my mother, I sat in silence, remembering all the good memories of how she showed me her love and it was enough to lull me to sleep.
She is in a much better place — surrounded by her mom, her dad, her brother and the love of her life — and is no longer in pain.
Journey towards hearts at peace
Joel Osteen was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey one Sunday in March, about his new book, “The Power of I Am.” They were surrounded by a row of oak trees, shielded from the sun, by its canopy.
“Are you always this joyful?” Exactly the question I would ask Joel, “No, not all days, but most days. It starts with a new day, I am breathing, “ he replied.
For Oprah, she shares that when she feels out of sorts, she thanks God and then, goes through her rolodex and asks herself, “Who can I help out today?”
After helping someone, she feels centered again.
I have heard this “soul-centering technique” before and it has been quite effective for me, too. Except, not a rolodex for me, but simply asking, who in my family needs me today?
But, it takes more than that for others. It also means adopting a spiritual discipline to bring in the Word of God into our lives.
Have you tried Daily Meditations with the Holy Spirit? What a powerful read for daily reflections. For example, “You did not receive a spirit of slavery leading to fear, rather, you received a spirit of adoption enabling us to cry out, ‘Abba, Father!’”
If we simply think we are God’s beloved, we walk lighter, weighing much less, unloading our burdens to our God that we can simply smile, as we are no longer relying on our own might.
“If you close around the pain and stop if from passing through, it will stay in you,” Singer reminds us. So the next time a moment or a memory of a loved one strikes you again (and that goes for me also), simply shoulder on, accept it with an open heart and mind, do not close your heart for you will be carrying the weight of that pain with you.
By doing that, the psyche acquires a border, a space between this memory of pain and suffering and you. You can then be freed from the “noise inside your mind,” which is nothing more than an attempt to avoid the stored pain.
Open your heart as inside, “you will find tremendous joy, beauty, love and peace within you,” Singer wrote, and you can simply be free to enjoy more experiences on this earth, until you die.
Perhaps that is what we are finding in our surroundings now. The world filled with pain and suffering, from loss of lives from indiscriminate bombings in Paris, Brussels and Pakistan, but not all spaces in the world are that way.
We cannot anticipate more of these incidents; instead, perhaps we can choose to connect more with one another, as we are made to be as human beings, be present and ready to listen, or to enjoy one another with open hearts.
It starts with me, holding onto the Power of I Am, my God!
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Prosy Abarquez-Delacruz, J.D. writes a weekly column for Asian Journal, called “Rhizomes.” She has been writing for AJ Press for 9 years now. She contributes to Balikbayan Magazine. Her training and experiences are in science, food technology, law and community volunteerism for 4 decades. She holds a B.S. degree from the University of the Philippines, a law degree from Whittier College School of Law in California and a certificate on 21st Century Leadership from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She has been a participant in NVM Writing Workshops taught by Prof. Peter Bacho for 4 years and Prof. Russell Leong. She has travelled to France, Holland, Belgium, Japan, Mexico and 22 national parks in the US, in pursuit of her love for arts.