Category: Reflections

  • Where your heart may take you

    The Siren by John William Waterhouse
    The Siren by John William Waterhouse

    There is a reason why we feel passion for certain things, people or places. When we are connected to our true desires, we are connected to the guiding voice of the Universe; we are connected to our purpose in this lifetime, in this moment. We then have two options; listen to our guiding intuition, or block it and ignore it in pursue of Ego’s wants and needs. This is true free will, it is always our choice. Each step we take is our own responsibility, no matter how hard we try to blame our circumstances, our past, others… in the end it will all fall back to ourselves.

    The question is, are you willing to see and experience where your heart may take you?

    When we feel peace and joy doing something that we love, isn’t it already enough to know it is correct? We don’t need the approval of others to know what we want, and to follow our dreams. No one else, ever, will understand what we are guided towards. We all have our parts to play in this big theatre of life, and each one is different. We all have a life purpose to fulfill, unique to each of us, and that’s the reason worth living for. Just being who we truly are, doing what we truly want, without fear; only the assurance that we are walking our personal paths the best way we can.

    Once that connection to our heart is made, and the spark starts to burn down the walls we have built around it thinking it was for protection, then we will have a clear vision of the sky of possibilities that surrounds us. There is nowhere to go but within, where the eternal present resides.

    Our outer world will be made with the essence of our inner world, it will only reflect what we carry within us. We are co-creators of our own destiny, of our own reality.

    One who understands the power of thought, will understand the power of the Universe. Like the seed that carries within itself the whole tree of life, our thoughts are the manifesting force of all that there is, and will ever be.

    Are you willing to go where your heart may take you?

  • To adapt, or not to adapt

    Dynamic Sunflower by Ricardo Chavez-Mendez
    Dynamic Sunflower by Ricardo Chavez-Mendez

    I’ve always been quite proud of myself because I always thought I was adaptable; adaptable to life changes, different lifestyles, different countries and cultures, different circumstances…

    Only quite recently I have begun to doubt if adaptation is really a good quality or not. We all know that adaptability is, in essence, a key for survival. And it’s exactly for this reason that my thoughts started to ponder other options. Survival? I don’t want to “survive”, I want to live. I want to experience fully the whole range of possibilities that life can place in my path. If I am always striving for adaptation to the scene that surrounds me, how is it possible that I follow MY own path? MY own dharma? MY own heart?

    Life can’t be only about “fitting in”, can it? It is true that we always have to respect other people’s choices about how to live their lives, but I don’t think we should adapt to their lifestyle if it doesn’t connect with us, in the most profound meaning of the word. If something, someone or somewhere doesn’t resonate with the true desires of our beings, we should never adapt to them just because we think we can’t survive otherwise. That is just an imaginary fear that can tear our dreams apart; that can drain our confidence in the Universe and our self-esteem and self-acceptance.

    We are enough the way we are, we are love and light in our most profound essence. We don’t need to adapt to other people’s paths or choices, only to the natural environment and our Mother Earth, who is generous enough to keep on providing resources for the human kind even though we make her bleed and suffer.

    Life is not about adapting, it’s about getting out there and being vulnerable, being humble and having faith that we are strong enough as to resist any obstacles placed in our way. We can only grow, and learn and break the wheel of Karma and Samsara by experiencing different aspects of our personalities, by living in the dark until we are able to see the light, by breaking our hearts into a million pieces so that the light can penetrate us and heal us. It’s a wonderful thing to have the opportunity of living a human experience, where we can at the same time savour earthly pleasures and connect with our divinity.

    Life is not something to be afraid of. It takes courage to scream with our whole beings that we are here, that we are ready to accept whatever comes. But once we learn the laws of life and nature, and the eternal dance of the Universe, then, only then, there is no turning back; there is no adaptation, there is only flow of miraculous existence; there is no judgement of others or ourselves. In the end we will truly grasp the meaning of life, by living. That’s how it’s meant to be. That’s why we are here.

    Once the picture is clear, the path Home is open for us to follow. Once we let our fear aside and trust our inner guide and intuition, everything else will fall into place. The puzzle of existence will then be completed, and the real and eternal lasting joy and happiness that everyone longs for will flourish in our hearts and shine through us. We will again feel complete in ourselves, as we have always been in reality.

  • The Island

    Art by Johnny Palacios Hidalgo
    Art by Johnny Palacios Hidalgo

    There was once a little island in the middle of the ocean, the big, blue ocean of existence. It was surrounded by water and marvelous creatures. The sun used to caress its sandy body and fill it with life, with trees and flowers and birds. It was an easy life, just being what it was, just existing as a creation of the most beautiful kind. But the island suddenly felt lonely. It all started when messages from faraway lands arrived to its shores through the singing of the birds and through lost letters in empty glass bottles. The island suddenly realized the world it had known for such a long time was just a small part of a huge Universe, so it started to feel curious, and started to pray that somehow it could see all that, or at least, have the company of people who have been to other places so they could tell stories of faraway lands and different cultures.

    One day a ship arrived to its shore. In it there was an explorer who was traveling the world, and that after a huge storm, the waves had washed the remains of the ship and herself to one of the beaches of the island. The island was so grateful that its wish was becoming true, all the trees and plants flowered as a welcome and nurturing gift for the mysterious explorer.

    The island could only communicate through the universal language of Nature, and the explorer, after being in so many places, could understand perfectly every single sound of the wind and the rain, and the animals, and the waves, and the stars.

    Their souls became attached quickly, as it was meant to be for them to find each other. Days, months, years went by, and the explorer became part of the island and its story. She had finally found her home.

    One day, another ship arrived to the island. This time, the people in it were not in search of lasting peace, but in search of land and gold. They brought with them all the selfishness and cruelty that sometimes mankind, human beings, can bear in their hearts after losing the connection to the infinite source of life; love.

    They started destroying the island, first by cutting the beautiful palm trees and building their homes, then by killing the animals of the earth, and the fish in the water. All they wanted was material possessions. The island slowly started to regret having felt lonely in the past and attracting people to itself. The island was losing against mankind, and the poor explorer couldn’t do anything to stop the situation from getting worse and worse. They both saw how these men had lost all connection to Nature, and to themselves; they couldn’t even hear the island crying and suffering, while bleeding its life away.

    The explorer was also slowly dying, as her soul was forever attached to the little island, and their union could never be broken.

    Everything started sinking slowly, and storms would hit the island almost every day. Trees and animals couldn’t provide food or shelter anymore and the men and women started fleeing the island full of fear that it would disappear underwater. Everyone slowly started leaving the island, after having taken with them all they could.

    The island looked deserted, without life, a piece of broken heart in the middle of the deep, blue, ocean. Only the explorer remained on its deserted body. Nothing was left except sand and soul. But they were once again happy and grateful, and more full of hope than ever. They trusted the Universe would provide them sunlight and rain, and the trees would grow again slowly, and the animals and fish would return. And life would be easy again, just being, just existing. But the explorer, after many days without anything to survive with, left her body and died, leaving it behind in the sand, and uniting forever her soul to the little island. As one soul, they were eternally content in their loneliness, without anything else, as it was the completeness of themselves, and within themselves, what they had always longed for.

    Now they knew the true meaning of life and existence. There was no need to find anything outside themselves, as the whole Universe was, and had always been, contained within their souls.

  • Out of Control

    Art by Remedios Varo
    Art by Remedios Varo

    All my life I’ve been fighting with the same demon, with the same fear of being out of control. In a world where nothing is permanent, being out of control is the worst fear I could encounter. Since I was very young I’ve tried to fight this fear in all the wrong ways possible; trying to keep under control things in my life. I used to organize every single item in my room, the small space that was my Universe, as a metaphor of organizing all the external factors that flow on a bigger order. I used to try and control my relationships, all of them, in order to feel safe. But I realized that organizing all the material realities in which I lived didn’t help at all. I was still spinning out of control; because the Universe is a big dark chaos in the eyes and minds of human beings. Our brains are too shallow to understand that there is a greater picture being played, of which we have no idea. And the only way to see what the outcome is, is to trust and have faith that everything and everyone is happening in our lives as they have to.

    Trust. Faith. Such powerful words that nowadays have been neglected to every single article, book and reference we can find. But, do their true meaning still resound in the profoundity of our souls? I’m still working on it. Every day. Every minute. Every breath.

    The only way to “control” the uncontrollable is to flow with it. There is no other secret for the end of suffering than to let things happen as they do. Always. In every situation; and I don’t want to say in every good or bad situation, because there is no such thing as good or bad, only different perceptions.

    Life is like a huge labyrinth through which we walk. There are many different paths for each of us to choose, and all of them lead to the same center, eventually. We can choose a straight line, or we can get lost, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s all in the choices we make every second. We have the power to co-create our reality if only we know how to connect with that center. We can follow our intuition and the signs that are placed along our way, or we can choose to ignore them all. In the end we will only get to the center if we learn each and every lesson meant for us.

    My choice is to let go. Let go of the path and the labyrinth itself, let go of my footsteps along the way, let go of suffering, let go of having choices. Let go. The way to flow with the energy is to let go of the waves and become the ocean.

    Do what you need to do in this life, fulfill your purpose and then let go, knowing that everything you did, the life you had, has always meant to be as it is. Your destiny, our destiny, is written in the choices we make. In every single breath we take, we have the infinite power and wisdom of the Universe. We just have to learn to become aware again of the oneness of it all, the wonderful connection of us all. We are walking together Home.

  • Expectation

    Jacob's Ladder by William Blake
    Jacob’s Ladder by William Blake

    We all know how frustrating it is to see how suddenly the perfect image of reality that we have created in our own minds unfolds in front of us just like a nightmare, instead of like a blissful dream. How is it possible that everything we thought was going to happen, everything we planned, didn’t work out? Well, there is a simple answer to this question, and also, a not so easy solution.

    It is expectation and desire that lead the way to inner torment and victimism. The only solution for it is non-attachment; non-attachment even to the present moment, eventually. Accepting each situation as it is in the moment, and not wanting it to be any other way, is the secret to fulfilling our soul’s hunger for eternity. It takes practice and patience to achieve mindfulness, but in the end, it is the only way to supress our ego’s thrill for expectation.

    When we open the door to imagining an outcome that isn’t there yet, we let our expectation of the future moment take the reins of our lives, and thus, we loose complete control of our emotions, relying completely on an unidentified future image that doesn’t even exist. If that personal desire isn’t completely fulfilled as thought, well, we all know what happens next: we enter the turmoil of grief and lost hope, thinking it was something other than ourselves who is guilty, and we start blaming everything and everyone around us. But, as always, everything is inside us, the victim and the executioner. Therefore, pain and happiness are also part of us. We just have to learn the art of balancing the light and the darkness; none of which can exist without the other.

    We must never confuse ourselves into finding perfection, because as human being, our gift is to experiment all the opposites and thrive for equilibrium. Peace is found in balance. Completeness is found in balance. Stillness amidst the chaotic waters of life will lead us to the infinity of oneness.

    There is no goal, no end, in the cycle of eternity. Living is the way, creating and co-creating with the Laws of Nature is something to be thankful about. We can cry and laugh; feel extreme love, and extreme hate; we can feel our hearts break into millions of pieces only to be put back together to love unconditionally. It is all part of being human; spiritual beings in a human journey able to feel, to touch the infinite possibilities that exist in every second.

    We do not need to expect anything, we just have to learn how to surrender to what is, always with a thank you in our hearts.