Are We Ready To Go Beyond 2012?

We are now less than three months away from December 21, 2012. The supposed end of the Mayan calendar has been receiving a lot of attention lately precisely because the date is so near. National Geographic's Doomsday Preppers is up on cable and if you haven't made similar preparations already perhaps you're now wishing you did. Although at this point in time, there's really not much in the way of physical preparations or skills acquisitions that one can do on the scale that's needed to be totally "disaster ready." But that's certainly no excuse not to have some sort of readiness level against most common emergencies.

For all the attention that December 21 has received, that day is still an enigma. What will really happen? We've been bombarded with a smorgasbord of theories ranging from alien invasion, pole shifts, catastrophic direct hits by coronal mass ejections, worldwide economic collapse all the way to the other end of the spectrum involving dimensional shifts, a worldwide raising of consciousness and the end of evil in the world. If there's one thing these theories are consistent with, it's in saying that a big change is coming.

Still, I would advise people not to get hung up on the date because I've also heard from other sources that should something happen, it would happen in January or February 2013 (depending on the source). At this point in time, all we can say is what's in the Bible, that "only the Father in heaven knows the day and the time." But this also carries the implied message that we have to be ready anytime.

Be that as it may, whatever preparations we may undertake is no guarantee for whatever may happen in the future. It's not even a guarantee against the next few hours, because any one of us can suddenly die from an accident or other cause. So what message can we extract during this time of uncertainty about the future? For me, the message would be this: living in the NOW.

The esoteric concept of Now didn't only come from Eckhart Tolle. It is a deep esoteric concept that we can get a hint of in the Bible when God in the burning bush gave His name as I AM THAT I AM. In some of his books, Master Choa Kok Sui mentions that during meditation, some meditators may experience the past, present and future converging, at which point the meditator would be experiencing the Now. That's a very deep concept of Now, something that can hardly be understood without experiencing it. But in order to dissect this concept into something applicable for us, we need to look at other levels of the Now.

For our everyday purposes, we can confine our concept of Now to living in the present. We often remain regretful of our past and fret about the future, so much so that we may miss the opportunities in front of us right now, today, to really appreciate what we have, where we are in life, and undertake the actions that would improve our state.

What if we just finally read that book we've been putting off for some time now, or played with our kid despite coming home tired from the office? What if we just savored the taste of our favorite coffee this afternoon, or finally did that community service we've been thinking about for so long? Today is tomorrow's yesterday, so if we spent today doing good, being happy and being grateful, then tomorrow when we look back we can be content that we made the most out of the day that had just passed. And guess what, we can even do more of that today!

Does this mean that we just act without factoring in the future and other possible events? Not at all. What is important is that we do not waste the time we have right now, to make the most of what we can do during the day, be it in prayer, meditation, helping others, completing a project or spending time with a loved one. Be aware of the things that matter and then go for it. Keep in mind that money, while important, is not the only thing that matters in this world. However, it's up to the individual to decide what to give priority to, although of course it would be wise to pay particular attention to the things that would survive with you after death (knowledge and karma).

If you have the time and resources to do some disaster planning and preparation, then do it wholeheartedly. Just be aware of the need to balance one's time between important tasks (and this includes sleep and rest!), and of course to let go at the end of the day. There are some things that we cannot control nor plan for, including hurts and disappointments, and that's where a measure of detachment is necessary.

I believe the greatest regret is that of time spent unwisely. In that sense, by living in the Now, what may happen in the future does not matter as much as the satisfaction gained by spending one's time wisely and making the most out of the time and resources that one has. So while December 21 is indeed speeding inexorably towards us, let's not forget the most important time which is, as you may have guessed, right now.

Right Of Way

Many years ago (more years than I care to admit) when I was taking my driver's license exam, there was one test question that stood out and I still remember it to this day. The question was, "What is the most important thing to remember about right of way?" The correct answer is: "Don't insist on it."

Insisting on one's right of way can lead to road accidents when other drivers are not street smart enough to recognize who has right of way or if they simply ignore it. It can certainly result in road rage when one's right of way is not respected. How many of us have railed against unruly bus or jeepney drivers who just do what they want on the road and are even the ones who get angry if we scold them?

The concept of "right of way" can also be applied to living life as well. "Right of way" in one sense comes from a feeling of entitlement. A right to speak, a right to feel, a right to get one's way. While it's important to recognize and value one's rights, operating too much from a sense of entitlement can lead us to hurt others by doing what's "right" for us but hurtful to others, or can get us hurt in turn if majority opinion is against us or someone more powerful insists on his/her way.

Just as a sense of entitlement comes from being attached to the idea of our rights or what is due to us, not insisting on one's right of way is a reflection of detachment. And so we go back to the root of suffering according to the Buddha, which is desire (desire being a form of attachment). We suffer when we don't get what we want or we are not given what we feel is ours by right.

We need humility in order to detach and give way, but humility can be difficult if we think that giving way diminishes one's worth in some way, as if we got one upped. It all boils down then to a question of self worth.

This type of reflection is even more important for spiritual people, because humility is not necessarily a given for those treading the spiritual path. For people on the spiritual path, it can be so easy to feel puffed up by one's beliefs or by what we think we know such that the temptation to look down or get angry at "non-spiritual" people is there.

Yehuda Berg of the Kabbalah Centre once wrote that just as we can't be mad at someone for being a bad singer, we can't get upset with someone because they're not spiritual. Again, there is the sense of entitlement that spiritual people deserve the better things in life, so we can get angry if we don't get the treatment or recognition that we feel is due to us.

I've read somewhere that wisdom consists of knowing what to do, if you should even do it, and when to do it if it must be done. As we end the week let's reflect on where our sense of self worth comes from. Does it come from the "treasures we lay in heaven" or from the opinions of other people, especially those most close to us?

It's a question only each of us can answer and it can be a tricky exercise, but how we answer it will determine how easy it will be for us not to insist on our right of way.

One Is All, All Is One

I recently saw an episode of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, and who would have known that you could pick up something profound from a Japanese cartoon show (popularly known as anime)? Although Animax has had several re-runs of the show, the few times I managed to catch an episode I didn't feel like following the series because it was already late in the season. However, recently Animax started running the show again and I happened to catch the beginning episode so I decided to watch it whenever I could.

Like most anime, Fullmetal Alchemist first started out as manga (comic book series) in 2001 before being adapted into TV in 2003, and then again in 2009 with Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. If you want to know more about the Fullmetal Alchemist universe you can just check out the Fullmetal Alchemist Wikipedia entry. Meantime, I would just like to focus on one particular episode, Episode 12: One Is All, All Is One (the same title I decided to use for this article). This episode details the time the Elric brothers (the main protagonists) were left in a small island by their alchemy teacher so that they could learn to survive and at the same time puzzle out the riddle of "one is all, all is one." How they answered the riddle would determine if they would be qualified to continue studying alchemy or not.

At one point, Edward Elric was already hallucinating from starvation (they had very minimal survival skills that time) when he happened to look upon a trail of ants that started to look like chocolate candy bars in his hallucinatory state. The moment he ate the ants, Edward made the connection between eating a life and living. Earlier in that episode, the Elric brothers caught a rabbit but they couldn't bring themselves to kill it. After the encounter with the ants, Edward then realized that if he had died, the foxes and the rabbits would have eaten him. His body would have been assimilated into the soil, the grass would get their nutrients from the soil, and the rabbit would have eaten the grass (and have indirectly "eaten" Edward's body).

Death is the transition from one form to another, but this transition also allows other life to be sustained when the transitioned form becomes the food that feeds the other. Paradoxically, death gives life. It is a cosmic cycle of life, all of us flowing inexorably from one state to the next, everything interconnected, with our movements governed by a set of cosmic laws.

From the point of view of the universe, we are even smaller than an ant would be to us. We are just "one" within the vast all. However, it is only when these small and seemingly insignificant "ones" are gathered together can an "all" exist. Creation is the totality of all that is. One is all, all is one.

In the Fullmetal Alchemist universe, alchemy is all about discovering the rules that govern life, and then using these rules in order to break things down and rebuild them into another form. Since the natural order of things is already a cycle of breaking down and rebuilding into another form, then life can be said to be one continuous process of alchemy. Alchemy is life itself.

Now how cool is that? I've been reading many different esoteric texts and they pretty much say or hint at the same things that were said above. And it's also so amazing because those short statements summarize the underlying philosophy of these esoteric teachings. There's more to it than that, of course, but for the esoteric student such insights are quite refreshing when seen on TV.

In the Hindu tradition, there are three aspects of divinity. There is Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. As per the teachings of Master Choa Kok Sui, these three aspects of divinity correspond to Light, Love and Power respectively. Brahma creates, Vishnu preserves and sustains, while Shiva destroys and restores (also called "creative destruction" or breaking down in order to build up into another form). The interaction of these three aspects of divinity is what is being described in the above featured episode.

If you want to watch the episode itself, you can watch it through You Tube below:



It shouldn't be surprising that Fullmetal Alchemist contains a lot references to esoteric knowledge. Hiromu Arakawa, the creator of the series, once read about the philosopher's stone. She got so inspired with the idea of using alchemy in a manga that she read actual books on alchemy. According to the Wikipedia description, Arakawa was more interested in the philosophical aspects of the different treatises rather than the actual process, so understandably a lot of what we see in Fullmetal Alchemist will be the product of artistic license.

It's still interesting though that some hints of esoteric knowledge still bleed out into the series. For example, a couple of the sigils being used in the series (refer to the image at the start of this article) wouldn't look out of place with the Solomonic pentacles found in the Clavis Salomonis (Key of Solomon). I also saw a reference to the Tree of Life with one of the Names of God written on a sefira. But again, we shouldn't make the mistake of using Fullmetal Alchemist as a practical reference guide. It's interesting for its entertainment value, but to make it something more than what it is would be foolhardy and dangerous.

Nevertheless, a dose of insight in the midst of fun and relaxation is always invigorating. It just reminds me that life always finds an opportunity to teach us something if we knew how to take the hint. The lesson then is not to take life too seriously but remain sensitive enough to get whatever messages that life is trying to give us.

Here's to a fun-filled, but very informative, life!