| I Believe In Love |
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| Life is a never ending circle Trust your heart and walk with it When you suffer enough from pain Love will come find you at last For every writer or artist seems to struggle against or tries to find some means to say on this one word, deep down they know, even words and images may still not be appropriated to embody the vitality of it, the vitality of love. Being a dreamer and a painter, I am not afraid to convey you my personal experiences and my discovery of this one thing that brings so much pain and joy to human being in this world we live in. And later on, you might even realise I don't suffer from talking about love, I enjoy it. From family love, love between friends, heterosexual love, homosexual love, to platonic love, where shall we begin and how shall we end it with? Love seems to loss its touch no matter how kitsch, narrative or figurative my depictions go. But someone's got to do it. That would be you and me, just you and me. This piece of writing will cover heavily on spiritual relationship between two persons, tackling the universal issues of suffering, happiness, uniqueness, Christianity, along with my faith on love, or you may say my persistence on my own vision of love. "The heart represents the food of love. Its pulse is fed by the sighs of inspiration, small covert messages, hints warmly received, stolen glances, caring looks, and blushes." Katy Deepwell, All You Need is Love, p.71 In representations we can always express the distinction between the reality and the representations as well as our notions of true and false, by using language, vision and sound, but not in the case of Love. Love itself remains something beyond physical reality. If there's one thing that almost represents love itself it would have to be the shape of a heart. The heart presents itself as the most ubiquitous image of the promise of love. Most often we speak of love in terms of a pounding heart, a stoned heart, a broken heart, etc.. The image of heart acts as a source of life, the deepest of our feelings and it remains somewhat vein for this relationship. Have you ever been in love with a person? If you haven't then I dare to say you haven't been truly living as a being, it's the greatest thing to do on earth. If we have to discuss and express the idea of love and the value between the lover and the beloved, I could start by telling you the range of emotions that was provoked by my own experience of it, the depth of feeling and its overwhelming nature in which we all have shared. This meaning of the relation between two persons is always more than one kind of emotion at once, when you "fall" for other person in this sense its like losing self-control. This sentimental attachment always turns into desire and burns your consciousness like a drugs or alcohol-addict would do for their drugs or alcohol. Then you find yourself at this crossroad either re-gain your consciousness or else give-in and follow your desire, stimulation and craving. But that isn't the whole picture of love of course. Have you ever been in love with a person? If you have then congratulations! You've confronted all the other emotions adhering along with love, that you've experienced passion, compassion, confusion, jealousy, fulfilled as well as broken promises, human bonds, possession and loss. Might you be those who have found love from its absence in the lack of love on one's life, the absence of the beloved, the betrayal of their trust, separation between the lover and the beloved, or the breaking of love through loss and in grief? The pain of separation is a bitter experience that it burns our souls. Perhaps, this is when you realise you'd been in love through the opposite of love? Perhaps, it is the absences secure the very positive knowledge that love exists between two persons? "I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU IN ME I LOVE YA BABY I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU AND GINNY WRIGHT I LOVE YOU I NEED YOU I LOVE YOU THE SMILE YOU SMILE I LOVE YOU (YEA) I LOVE YOU 1000 TIMES I LOVE YOU A THOUSAND WAYS I LOVE YOU AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT I LOVE YOU ANYWAY I LOVE YOU BABE I LOVE YOU BABY I LOVE YOU BECAUSE I LOVE YOU BECAUSE (STEREO) LOVE YOU (BECAUSE YOU LOOK LIKE JIM REEVES) I LOVE YOU BECAUSE YOU'RE JUST OUT OF REACH I LOVE YOU BEST OF ALL I LOVE YOU BIG DUMMY I LOVE YOU BIT I LOVE YOU CHERRY I LOVE YOU DROPS I LOVE YOU EASY I LOVE YOU FOR THAT I LOVE YOU FOREVER I LOVE YOU FOREVER AND EVER I LOVE YOU FULL I LOVE YOU HONEY I LOVE YOU HONEY BUT I HATE YOUR FRIENDS I LOVE YOU IN AN OLD FASHIONED WAY I LOVE YOU IN THE SAME OLD WAY I LOVE YOU IN THE STRANGEST WAY I LOVE YOU JUST THE SAME I LOVE YOU LIKE A BALL AND CHAIN I LOVE YOU LIKE A WOMAN I LOVE YOU LOVE I LOVE YOU LOVE ME LOVE I LOVE YOU MADLY I LOVE YOU MEDLEY I LOVE YOU MORE I LOVE YOU MORE AND MORE I LOVE YOU MORE AND MORE EACH DAY I LOVE YOU MORE AND MORE EVERYDAY I LOVE YOU MORE THAN ANYTHING" Fiona Banner, Love Double, 1998-2000 Love Double might sound crazy or even threatening to a large amount of people but currently doesn't surprise me at all. These three simple words have driven enough people mad and lost their heads. Everything else comes with the three words is no more than supplement, only this powerful expression convey the very meaning of a relationship between two persons. While the impact of these words do depend on situation, context and the trust invested within the message, we should still be more alert to the richness of these words and the variety of the forms they bring and associate with. Hand-written love letter holds a depth of conviction which electronic communication could never be able to compare with, yet the means of communicating one's feelings between sender and recipient no matter hand-written or being read on a computer screen, is still remaining there. So where is love to be found? Does it exist in that risky chemical reaction between the relationship of the two or simply the property of the one who gives? Unfortunately love demands a concrete sexual or a social relation to give it form, while trust and determination allow you both to breathe, fantasy and projection fill its track, and the reality of another's feelings act as a powerful source on this long and wilding journey. Yet love remains ordinary and extraordinary at the same time in each and everyone of us. Whether my love remains un-requited or un-reciprocated, is shared or betrayed, it does not exist as love without an object for my affection in the form of the beloved. And because of our own interpretations get in the way the beloved is always more than fantasy can provide. In this sense love exists as a form of communication; from joy, freely given, shyly retain, quietly keep in one's heart, misunderstanding love languages, to grief; shared only between you and the beloved. Love is such a common experience in every one of us but every person earnestly feels is truly unique, we will go into it later on. "Put romantic love at the centre of a novel today, and who would be persuaded that in its pursuit the characters are going to get to something large? That love is going to throw them up against themselves in such a way that we will all learn something important about how we got to be as we are, or how we got to be as we are, or how the time in which we live got to be as it is. No one, it seems to me. Today, I think, love as a metaphor is an act of nostalgia, not of discovery" Vivian Gornick, The End of the Novel of Love, 1999, p.165 Do you wish to be something for the beloved, or to become the person your beloved wishes you to be? You do. I do. Because love carries a great weight of expectations, either actively and passively or both. We know in those post-modern times, they were the prime of fairytale and romance novels. Their influences were obvious. What did they talk about? They talked about the trials of love, the quest of the lover, or hero/heroine to win recognition from the beloved, the importance of each moment they spend together, the interpretation of every gesture and exchange of looks and words. Eventually the beloved in those time becomes poetry in motion, an idealised sight. One hangs on the sound of their voice, one remembers the small characteristic gestures and the beauty of the beloved till the end of time. Such tales structure our childhood expectations and hopes for what our future loves might be. To express love in this certain fashion doesn't override the passion which love inspires in our own life. Here love acts as an inspiration, even an order, to be worthy of our lover and the hopes they bear. In the modern society, many Hollywood blockbuster films might be the last saving art-form for the fantasy of love. If you don't believe me, go to the cinema or rent two or three videos and DVDs you'll see, the heroes/heroines always prove they 'can' love someone else, or else 'love lasts forever'. Luckily we learn about what love is not only from the idealised love so these films are structured, but thousands and thousands of sources, such as our families and friends, novels, films and of course, in the world of art. Quite often we learn about a range of positive as well as negative emotions love summons in others before we've ever spoken about, experienced or even felt those things in our own life. Yet in the culture I've been growing up from, most people fail to re-gain consciousness at the beginning in a relationship, and carry on making mistakes, I've seen it in my own eyes. While I understand human are born to be weak at emotions and relationship affairs, after all this is what make us human, however, that doesn't explain love triangle, love quadrilateral, but we aren't going into these relationship messes. Occasionally people come to me with their relationship problems, sometimes what I did was a help, at least I listen and I feel the suffering, sometimes I'm sorry to say, people have to suffer enough in a relationship so that they get disillusioned with all relationships. Isn't that a terrible thing to think? It didn't make sense to me for many years until I discovered that people have to suffer enough in broken relationships then they would say, "I'm sick of it! There must be a better way of living than depending on another human being." "You've been trying to destroy me, haven't you,' she said. 'You've been trying to assimilate me. But I've made you a substitute, something you'll like much better. This is what you really wanted all along, isn't it? I'll get you a fork,' she added somewhat prosaically. Her fianc? Peter stared from the cake of a woman's body to her face and back again. She wasn't smiling. His eyes widened in alarm. Apparently he didn't find her silly... When he had gone... Suddenly she was hungry. Extremely hungry. The cake after all was only a cake." Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman, 1980, p.271 Its just that nothing is as painful as self-recognition in love. Disappointment, slights, rejections, fears, destroy our secure and idealised sense of an ideal blissful and lasting love. These negative emotions structure the generous hopes we carry for our relationships with others to grow, they harden our hearts and frustrate our ability to speak of how we feel. On the other hand, it's a great thing to have suffered. Only then can we get sick of it, and we can make use of suffering to end suffering. At this point we've got to realise the reason we suffer from our depression and our anxieties in a broken relationship is that we like to identify with them. To be accurate I say we are only experiencing a depression and anxieties at that moment. Emotions like depression, anxieties, even joy won't last. Buddhism suggests that in this world all the beings won't last, beings keep changing, beings always changing. Like clouds, some of them are white and some grey, some of them are small and some large, they come and they go. Emotions live inside of beings, beings change, emotions change. From my point of self-observation as well as my surroundings all these years, selfishness seems to be our deepest and first instinct, which was first innocent, polluted by our cultures and programming, then we build inner walls and constantly seeking our own-interest. For that we have to stop spending our lifetime grappling with our wrong notions of people, we've got to see through ourself, then we will see through everyone, then we will love each other. But that's not the whole picture neither, I've met people whose overcome their instinct of self-preservation, another words, they overcome what they are, and practice on what they do or don't. Practice on exactly what? To give, and to love. Perhaps we are missing something right from the start, "What is love?", "Is love something that I have?" and "Is love something that you have?" I am going to tell you that most recently I was stuck by a quote, more of a question actually, from a spiritual guide called Awareness, by Anthony De Mello, probably the most gifted spiritual teachers of the 20th century - "Love is not something that we have; love is something that has us. You do not have the wind, the stars, and the rain. You don't possess those things, you surrender to them" Anthony De Mello, Awareness, p.176 "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, Bible Such perfect suggestion of true love has long written clearly inside the heart of the Bible, sharing at our face, though most of us never care to see it. As Anthony would say, we are so drown by what our culture calls love with its many fairytale, love songs, novels and poems. Perhaps that isn't love? Is that the opposite of love? Is that desire and control and possessiveness? Is that merely manipulation, and fear, and anxiety? We have many ways of making our happiness depend on other things, both within us and outside us, because we're thinking or focusing on what we don't have. "An attachment destroys your capacity to love. What is love? Love is sensitivity, love is consciousness. What is a loving heart? a loving heart is sensitive to the whole of life, to all persons; a loving heart doesn't harden itself to any person or thing. ...The heart in love remains soft and sensitive. When you're hell-bent on getting this or other thing, you become ruthless, hard, and insensitive. How can you love people when you need people? You can only use them. If I need you to make me happy, I've got to use you, I've got to manipulate you, I've got to find ways and means of winning you. I cannot let you be free. I can only love people when I have emptied my life of people. When I die to the need for people, then I'm right in the desert. In the beginning it feels awful, it feels lonely, but if you can take it for a while, you'll suddenly discover that it isn't lonely at all. It is solitude, it is aloneness, and the desert begins to flower." Anthony De Mello, Awareness, p.140 Human cannot win over loneliness, but we are stronger together. How frightening to say I care my people but I don't need them. But Anthony points out we don't necessary need each other, we can be perfectly happy without each other, because by telling these words we can enjoy each other company thoroughly - no more anxieties, no more jealousies, no more possessiveness, no more clinging. Anthony adds, "It is a delight to be with you when I am enjoying you on a non-clinging basis. You're free; so am I." This has taken me many months to begin to understand it, it might take me a lifetime to fully understand it. Does that really going to work on an intimate friend that you care so much? You might not need them but are you sure you can be perfectly happy without them? Perhaps. Once a person goes into your inner world they stay in there till the day you die - because you know this special person is going to make your life completed. And that's when the memories belongs to the two of you stay in your heart. To achieve such level of generosity is a long spiritual journey, and the friendship has to be firmed. Anthony remains us that we cannot view people in terms of our attachments, otherwise we would be drown into appreciation and miss out the uses of criticisms. I look into myself, whenever I am attached to appreciation and praise, I view people in terms of their threat to my attachment or their fostering of my attachment. . Only then we begin to see the object of its attachment objectively, standing in the middle of the scale. Only then we begin to understand love entails clarity of perception, objectivity. People says love is blind, that's false - addiction is blind,attachments are blind. Clinging, craving, and desire are blind. But not true love. As Anthony himself would say, "Believe me, there's nothing so clear-sighted as true love, nothing. It's the most clear-sighted thing in the world." Well tell me, Anthony, why do you fall in love with a person? "So why do I fall in love with a person really? Why is it that I fall in love with one kind of person and not another? Because I am conditioned. I've got an image, subconsciously, that this particular type of person appeals to me, attracts me. But falling in love has nothing to do with love at all. It isn't love, it's desire, burning desire." Anthony De Mello, Awareness, p.118 It is true. We don't really see that person when we are attracted to them, because our emotion gets in the way. Look can deceive, wealth fades away, but a healthy relationship makes your heart smiles. Anthony suggests when true love enters, we no longer like or dislike people in the ordinary sense of the world. We see them clearly and we respond accurately, yet our likes and dislikes and preferences and attractions, etc., continue to get in the way. So we have to be aware of our prejudices, our likes, our dislikes, our attractions. They're all there, they come from our conditioning. This one word, love, has been desecrated in most modern languages. Are we programmed? Are we conditioned? People keep on talking about making love and falling in love in the public, while artists keep on describing and conveying the shape or structure of love in the world of art. From the most narrative and figurative depictions, images of beautiful men and women as objects of desire, to pornography, love, however, once again eludes all these physical representations in all these words and images. We know, love has only metaphors and symbols through which we can allude to it. Love itself still remains something that is beyond physical reality; existing only as a concept; an emotion; a relation - waiting to be fulfilled. "Is it possible for the rose to say, "I will give my fragrance to the good people who smell me, but i will withhold it from the bad"? Or is it possible for the lamp to say, "I will give my light to the good people in this room, but I will withhold it from the evil people"? Or can a tree say, "I'll give my shade to the good people who rest under me, but i will withhold it from the bad"? These are images of what love is about. The first time I got a glimpse of this new world, it was terrifying. I understood what it meant to be alone, with nowhere to rest your head, to leave everyone free and be free yourself, to be special to no one and love everyone - because love does that. It shines on good and bad alike; it makes rain fall on saints and sinners alike." Anthony De Mello, Awareness, p.61 "Where there is love there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy; my happiness does not lie in you. If you were to leave me, I will not feel sorry for myself; I enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling. ...Can you be said to love me if you cling to me and will not let me go? If you will not let me be? Can you be said to love me if you need me psychologically or emotionally for your happiness?" Anthony De Mello, Awareness, p.97 To me love and pain are both in this world for a reason as they pay their part for making sure the world is in balance. When there is love gain there is always love loss, it is a fact. It is important to be loved as well as to be hurt; It is important to be appreciated as well as to be criticised. As my poem says very clearly from the start, Life is a never-ending circle - when you suffer enough from pain love will come find you at last, and I believe one day I am going to see that the love I give return to me. "Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture. To acquire happiness you don't have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Does anyone know why? Because we have it already. How can you acquire what you already have? Then why don't you experience it? Because you've got to drop something. You've got to drop illusions. You don't have to add anything in order to be happy; you've got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It's only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings." Anthony De Mello, Awareness, p.78 Happiness doesn't seem to be something we acquire, nor is something two persons produce. Like love, happiness is a form of abstraction anyway there's no one definition for it. Happiness does not need a definition from others. Because happiness lives inside our hearts like a personal fantasy, becomes a source of energy we chase for, fight for or to die for. And that's when our own individuality bloom. There are times when I question my own happiness then there this voice comes up over and over again - in this changing world full of many different voices, stay the same. According to Anthony, if we wish to love, we must learn to see again. And if we want to see, we must learn to give up your drug, ?Give up your dependency. Tear away the tentacles of society that has enveloped and suffocated your being. You must drop them.§ I have dreamed of a life in which I depend on no one emotionally before, isn't that sounds great that no one has the power to make you happy or miserable any more? In this case you refuse to need any particular person or to be special to anyone or to call anyone your own. Isn't that great to be able to see with a vision that is clear without fear or desire? How would I ever get there Anthony? "By a ceaseless awareness, by the infinite patience and compassion you would have for a drug addict. By developing a taste for the good things in life to counter the caving for your drug. What good things? The love of work which you enjoy doing for the love of itself; the love of laughter and intimacy with people to whom you do not cling and on whom you do not depend emotionally but whose company you enjoy. It will also help if you take on activities that you can do with your whole being, activities that you so love to do that while you're engaged in them success, recognition, and approval simply do not mean a thing to you." Anthony De Mello, Awareness, p.173 Anthony, the one activity I can do with my whole being that is to love beings. I go up to the mountains, and silently commune with trees and flowers, and animals, and birds, with sea and clouds and sky and stars, the earth is praying, and I hear they are all praising the beauty of humanity. Loneliness is not cured by human company, we generally seek to cure our loneliness through emotional dependence on people, though social life and noise. That isn't seem to cure at all. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality. I am a dreamer, all the best I can do is to dream; I can not make contact with reality. This is why I cease to live and my life was destroyed, because I cling with memories, and I cling with my dreams, fantasies and illusions. What is wrong with loving being in our own special way? You see there's just no explanation we can give that would explain away all the sufferings and evil and torture and destruction and hunger in the Real world. We will never explain it. We can gamely with our formulas, religious and otherwise, but we will never explain it. Because life is a mystery, which means our thinking mind cannot make sense out of it. For that we question, is reality the problem? Perhaps we are the problem. "External events have the power to hurt you, that other people have the power to hurt you. They don't. It's you who give this power to them. So you think it is important to be respectable, to be loved and appreciated, to be important. Many say we have natural urge to be loved and appreciated, to belong. That's false. Drop this illusion and you will find happiness. Happiness is a state of non-illusion, of dropping the illusion. We have a natural urge to be free, a natural urge to love, but not to be loved." Anthony De Mello, Awareness, p.113 Should we need to get in touch with negative feelings first, that we're not even aware of this moment. Should we understand that the feeling is in us, not in reality. It's self-evident. We give people the power to make us unhappy, while we give people the power to make us happy too. That there are events on earth that has the power to disturb us or hurt us, yet there are always events in our lives that give us strength and make us smile from the bottom of our hearts. There might be a depression inside you right now, there might be some hurt feelings inside you right now. But friends will be there, to walk with you. People are stronger together. Remember that sentence from the Bible about everything turning into good for those who love God? When we found love has longed live within, you don't try to make good things happen; they just happen. We understand suddenly that everything that happens to us is good. We see people and things not as we are, but they are. That is why when two people look at something or someone, you get two different reactions. We've got to realise we aren't much different from each other, the magic of love will flow in between the two of you. Although our individualities constantly distance our own self from others but you look into yourself, you know you have a natural urge to love, just like other human being in the world. Yes, human being is found concrete, we hardly find an universal human being like our concept. So our concept points are never entirely accurate; they misses uniqueness, concreteness. The concept is universal but no concept applies into what love may be. Because love is unique in each and everyone of us. When I call a person a man, that's true; but there are lots of things in that person that don't fit into the concept "man". He is always this particular, concrete, unique man, who can only be experienced, not conceptualised. The concrete person I've got to see for myself, to experience for myself, to intuit for myself. The individual can be intuited but cannot be conceptualised. A concept always misses or abridges something extremely important, something which can only found in reality, that is concrete uniqueness. If we look at things through our concepts we'll soon be bored. Every single thing is unique. Every tree is unlike every other trees despite the similarities. it's a great help to have similarities, only then we can abstract, so that we can have a concept. It's a great help, from the point of view of communication, education, science. But it's also very misleading and a great obstruction to seeing this concrete individual. If our experience is our concept, then we're not experiencing reality, because reality is concrete. The concept is a help, to lead us to reality, but when we get there, we've got to experience it directly. Every time I see a pair of lover holding hands, I don't see them, I see the work of love. At least I don't see what I'm accustomed to seeing. I see something with the freshness of a child's vision. I don't know how to describe it. I see something unique, whole, flowing, not fragmented. And I'm in awe. If you were to ask me, "What did you see?" what do you think I'd answer? I don't know how to describe it. Love is right there. There is nothing can be described for reality. Because as soon as I put a word to it, we'll back into concepts again. This doesn't mean we should drop our concepts totally; they are very precious, aren't? When we start off in life, we look at reality with wonder, the very formless wonder of the child. Then as we grow old and develop language and concepts, wonder dies and is replaced by boredom. Though we begin without them, concepts have a very positive function. Thanks to them we develop our intelligence. We're invited to fall from a stage of innocence in order to develop an "I" and a "me" through them, and to become unique. Once again, "Love" is only a word on these papers you're reading, one never quarrels about reality; we only quarrel about concepts, about opinions, about judgements. Love itself is beyond the thinking mind. Open your eyes, listen to your heart very carefully, and you will see love is everywhere, lighten this world of darkness. All I'm trying to convey you the message here is that each of us have a kind of love of our own. This love bases on our experiences and surroundings we have perceived since we were born in this world. To me the greatest gift as a human is to love, and it's painful to see the world is suffering. From that I hope to spread love and peace through my work of art. I wish to inspire people some in small ways some in large ones. This is my task. This is my job. This is my mission. This is what I was born to be. This is why I am still here. Love can break down the walls love can conquer everything, and only love can do so; Love is unique. I fell in love with a German, so I travelled to Germany; I fell in love with a Taiwanese, so I travelled to Taiwan. Is an action to break down all the boundaries; an action to prove my determination. With a bit of persistence I always want to practice my love. The consequences might well be devastated, but somebody's got to do it. I'd like to thank Anthony who's given us a new program for life. But I am not Anthony. I am not a mystic, I am not a psychologist, I am not a spiritualist, I am not a Christian, I am not you. I am Ricky. Do I think psychology more practical than spirituality after all these spiritual talks? My answer is there's nothing more practical then to give and to love this world. What can psychologist do? What can spiritualist do? They can only relieve the pressure. It's only when we're sick of our sickness then we'll get out of it. If we want freedom, if we want joy and peace, then practice your love! Practice your love. I think to practice your love is the most practical thing in the whole world. Not piety, not devotion, not religion, not worship, but to love. Enrich yourself by observing yourself and people and the world through spirituality. Look at the heartache everywhere, look at the loneliness, look at the fear, the confusion, the conflict in the hearts of people, inner conflict, outer conflict. Suppose somebody else would give us a way of getting rid of all these? Suppose somebody else would give us a way to stop those tragedies of health, of emotion that comes from these conflicts and confusion? Would you want that? Suppose somebody else would show us a way a way to truly love one another, be at peace, be at love? Can we think of anything more practical than that? But, instead, we have people thinking that big business is more practical, that politics is more practical, that science is more practical. What's the earthly use of putting a man on the moon when we cannot live on the earth? How much time do we have? Eternal life? "You think its everlasting life. But your own theologians will tell you that that is crazy, because everlasting is still within time. It is time per-during forever. Eternal means timeless - no time. The human mind cannot understand that. The human mind can understand time and can deny time. What is timeless is beyond our comprehension. Yet the mystics tell us that eternity is right now. How's that for good news? It is right now. People are so distressed when I tell them to forget their past. They are so proud of their past. Or they are so ashamed of their past. They are crazy! Just drop it! When you hear "Repent for your pass", realise it's a great religious distraction from waking up. Wake up! That's what repent means. Not "weep for your sins." Anthony De Mello, Awareness, p.43 We don't have a choice but to agree, we cannot understand eternity. Once I was in a conversation about suicide and I told the others that I believe goodbye is for chasing the eternal beauty of memory. Then I was asked what eternity exactly is. I went silent and muse. Because I don't know. How the earthly can I say such "goodbye is for chasing the eternal beauty of memory" when I don't even understand what eternity is? Because I believe in it. Understand and believe are totally different. Eternal life suggest there is a life after death. What about a life before death? It's precisely those who don't know what to do with this life who are all hot and bothered about what they are going to do with another life. When I go to church people there say "God is eternal", what do they really know about? They think they understand it, they don't! They say God loves you. They say God loves you simply because he has chosen to do so. They say others may abandon you, divorce you, and ignore you, but God will always love you no matter what. They say we are able to love each other and are blessed of everything we have because we are living loved from above. God stands as righteous - he can do no wrong. Do you feel better? You must have. Why? You know why. God is and has always been absolute mystery. I don't understand what God is; You don't understand what God is; no one can. we have intimations, inklings; we make faltering, inadequate attempts to put mystery into words. But words are only pointers, they aren't not descriptions. Karl Rahner says, "the task of the theologian is to explain everything through God, and to explain God as unexplainable." But see, we want to lean on someone, something, don't we? We love to hear that special someone, or that special event has arrived. It gives us hope, doesn't it? What do we want to hope for? Could that be another form of desire? We want to hope for something better than what we have in this world right now, don't we? Otherwise you wouldn't be hoping. But then again, we forget that we have it all right now anyway, and we don't know it... Why not concentrate on the now instead of hoping for better times in the future? Why not understand the now instead of forgetting it and hoping for the future? Could the future be merely another trap? "This is what real love is: It is not our love for God; it is God's love for us in sending his Son to be the way to take away our sins" 1 John 4:10, Bible Love for God, for a cause, for a belief system, for one's family, for a region or a country, all grand passions. These passions are often similar or bound up with the emotions of sexual love between a love and their beloved. Love itself still operates on a promise of creating something more or something different by a reality which forces or limits our actions and choices. May be love is the thing which we discover the limits of our own personality where, how, and how much we are capable of love and of loving others? Do we know through our own experience what love really is? Do we know love more through the imaginary relationship of our life? Do we know love more through their representation and stylisation in art, film, novel and fiction? Anthony challenges my beliefs and the belief system that makes me unhappy all these years, of not being able to let go. Is he helping us to unlearn? Anthony offers a great lesson this is what learning is all about where spirituality is concerned: unlearning, unlearning almost everything we have been taught. A willingness to unlearn, to listen. Awareness the book is the second tide of my life, it's enriched my thinking mind especially my viewing on love and how I read it, and there's so much more to discover and enjoy by many other writers or artists could be devoted into it. The first tide of my life was a film that I watched when I was nine years old. I remember I was captivated by the film's daring, its simplicity, its innocence, its beauty. And its exciting and challenging how these two tides crush against each other. Let me introduce you this marvellous film, My Neighbour Totoro, directed by Hayao Miyazaki, the creator of Japan's modern animation classics. My Neighbour Totoro takes us into the postwar era of the beautiful Japanese countryside. Two little girls and their father moved into an old house next to a huge tree up in a small hill. While their mother suffering from tuberculosis in the hospital and their father busy at work, Mei and her elder sister Satsuki soon found themselves in a world of wonder, where cuddly creatures called Totoros can soar on spinning tops above the land, tiny seeds can turn into huge trees, and big furry cat with multi-legged bound across the countryside unseen by adults. Nature and imagination work their magic for Mei and Satsuki when they need help and comfort the most, proving the two little girls how powerful and how precious the beautiful world around us is. "All the sophistication and intelligence that Miyazaki and his team bring to My Neighbour Totoro is devoted to the most difficult task for ant artist: to create a work that appears as simple and natural as breathing. A doctor or scientist understands the complex mechanisms of physical and chemical exchange that keep the human organism's lungs at work; a child only knows that it breathes in and out and can float dandelion seeds and feathers on its breath. To draw in their young audience, and to enable the rest of us to enter Totoro's rich and complex world in the spirit of childhood, the director and his staff have made a world that works down to the smallest detail. We don't think of it as art; we accept it as life." Helen McCarthy, Hayao Miyazaki Master of Japanese Animation, p.136 - 137 Miyazaki and his team created such naturalistic world for us to marvel at, linking between the particular and the general, between the little natural steam and the ordered work of the farmers, between beauty and utility. That the character Mei painstakingly travelled all the way to the hospital to practice her love to her mother, to be able to render a little girl's blessing on a corn husk so perfectly in the last hospital scene. The everyday magic of life is depicted with a depth of love and respect that cannot help but touch most of us as determined urbanites. Moreover, Miyazaki uses such playful music and contrast between darkness and light so effectively to blur the boundaries between the real and the mysterious, the predictable and the uncertain. The beauty of Japanese culture magically distils from the scenes inside the film itself is fascinating. For instance, in every culture in the world children love to run around empty houses and make noise, but western audience might not realise when Mei jumping up and down on hand made, traditional tatami mats can seem shocking to the Japanese so they will understand the excitement and energy expressed in it. What is more, the traditional Japanese family bath sequence might raise worries for some yet could provide a valuable point for discussion about the private actions and relationships parents should have with their children. From what I see the father is a good husband, loving and supportive, perhaps sometimes devote himself too much into his work but a wonderful father and a reliable source in time for trouble. Unfortunately some western audience could have misunderstood the bath sequence as the potential for abuse without seeing a loving relationship of a father with his children. The characters and relationships in the films emphasises the theme of goodwill and neighbourliness, especially on Satsuki, and her relationships with other 3 main female characters. Mei, Satsuki, Mother and Grandma continues the cycle of life through young and old. Four characters form a composite image of the development of female warmth and strength, enriches My Neighbour Totoro with a human rhythm of the natural cycle of growth. From the stress of their mother's illness, a threat that Satsuki recognises with fear, Miyazaki gives us a delightful portrait of a child not yet ready to start moving into the adult world but with some of its responsibilities forced on her by circumstance. She is not alone in the world or is pressured into adult difficulties and decisions, but she's begun to realise such things will happen soon. When Satsuki holds back a little as Mei leaps into the arms of her mother, and hesitates before accepting Totoro's invitation to fly with him, she is expressing our own fears in which leaving childhood behind means leaving spontaneity and unconditional delight of the young. The love of her mother and the wisdom from her grandma show her there are duties and responsibilities ahead, but it is Totoro who tells her, and every one of us, that flinging caution into the wind and flying off on a spinning top can be fun at any age. Mei and Satsuki are on a quest as any fantasy hero's/heroine's journey, they are seeking the magic in their everyday world. The treasure they win will be the ability to find that magic, whatever circumstance or experience may hide it. From Mei's first accidental discovery of Totoro's world through Totoro casually steps into their world to catch a cat-bus; Totoro is showing the girls, and every one of us, the miracle of life. And from Satsuki's fears of losing her beloved mother and then her little sister till the moments Satsuki has found Mei with the help of the cat-bus and the two little girls have seen for themselves that their beloved mother is safe, here the power of love devastates our despair and restores our faith on magic and love. Just for that moment, their mother thinks her children smiling at her from the trees outside her window in the hospital ? few heroes achieve such triumph! My Neighbour Tototo practices a depth of wisdom and grace in which can only be found in few works in any medium nowadays. The film is accessible to even the youngest child, yet it respects the intelligence of the most educated and talented adult. They say seeing is believing. For once they are right. As soon as you have the opportunity I encourage you to watch My Neighbour Totoro like I did on that evening in 1991. I can assure you the film still delights and surprises me every time I watch it, no matter how often I've seen it. Rent the video or the DVD, then sit quietly and wait for the magic begins. Then you will see what I see all these years. Believe. Believe in what your heart wants to say. Christian believe in God. I believe in memories, dreams and humanity. Memories are what make us who we are today, unique and standing tall. A bright future will always be based on our past failures and heartaches. There's a lovely quote says that life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that takes our breath away, and its true to me. At 22 I've had many incredible moments, especially the pass 8 years in this land, I've met so many people from many different cultures who have offered me their time, patience, help and support. It is the beauty of memories and love pierce the blinds of my eyes that keep me from seeing magic. All I have to do is to look up at the starry night and I can see them smiling at me. Dreams are what we make them, I am a dreamer and I love the whole idea of fulfilling your dreams and I believe they are real. Dream can become reality and you can make yours come true too remember that. So dream what you want to dream, go where you want to go, be what you want to be, because you only have one life and one chance to do all the things you want to do. To you who come to read this piece of writing with such an open heart - thank you for seeing in yourself what you see in me. Believe me, Love is everywhere - for all its seemingly old-fashioned allusions and idealism. From inside our physical organs of our bodies, the private communications between two persons, pornographic fantasy, within the formal acknowledgements given by friends and families, in the open display of marriage, to the valuable mutual and reciprocal exchange, love acts as a powerful source of energy in our lives, the one reason to live. So please listen when I say, Don't give up on your faith, love comes to those who believes it! |