Neale Walsch wrote: “Like a tree outside your window, whose seed carried within it all the coding required for it to grow into what it has become , you arrived here knowing everything you needed to know to be everything you were designed to be.”

I interpret Walsch to say: “My belief that I was given all I need before I came to this life must explain why i get so many challenges for me to experience and respond using my personal gifts.”

My prayer, therefore, is that I am see.

When challenges come one after the other I forget that I was made to the image and likeness of God.

When I am scared I lose the essential nature of my mind. I get confused and my mind becomes even more upset and i fail to see what i already have.

“…love, joy, happiness, sense of true self that you experience – and that others experience in their life because of you- along the way.”

Neale Walsch along with Sylvia Boorstein make my pathway easier. No impossible dogmas to believe in Faith. No vague obligations and responsibilities.

Self-worth is enhanced. Both guides make me firm in my belief that “I was made to the image and likeness of God.” How empowering.

If only Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain had met Walsch and Boorstein!

What a relief! I don’t have to give up my basic self. I simply have to change my responses. “Emotional Agility” one of the articles in ON EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE is as kind as Sylvia Boorstein.

“The opposite of control is acceptance – not acting on every thought or resigning yourself to negativity but responding to your ideas and emotions with an open attitude, paying attention to them and letting yourself experience them.”

No religious violence to self. No running away.
“Here I am”
“It is the response to the challenge to acknowledge the truth of the present moment, to recognize what needs to be done, and to be prepared to do it.” (Sylvia Boorstein)

Alleluia! I can be myself.

I thought after I survived the challenges of March till the middle of May, the second half of the month of simply be cruising.

Not so. It is so tempting to just give up. i just want to be normal. Why bother to be special/different/

As if to taunt m, I keep hearing the instrumental version of “Hercules”. But I know the lyrics as sang by Lea Salonga. And I can’t give up!

Thursday morning. I woke up to a resolve not to pray that I be spared from challenges but rather to be able to face challenges with wise and compassionate responses as learned from Sylvia Boorstein.

Hours later, i discover my old, venerable, actually phone would not work. The button of the most used function won’t budge. and I had planned to spend a quiet day hibernating in our condo.

Of course i had to go to the mall to have the phone repaired. I would not be able to order my meals without my phone. My “suki” does not have a landline.

In the mall I met old friends and made a new one. But why did the universe have to
paralyze my phone to let me connect with people?

Life is mysterious?!

Buddha was a teacher. So was Jesus. But now that I have turned 75, i prefer the Buddha.
Jesus was more literary; he used a lot of symbols, irony, paradox and a lot of contradictions.
I have no patience for that type of teaching.

I prefer the Buddha as presented by Sylvia Boorstein. I like the practical and straight to the point style. I like that the Buddha according to Boorstein taught not to believe even the Buddha but to go by one’s experiences. I love this.

“The Second Noble Truth explains that suffering is what happens when we struggle with whatever our life experience is rather than accepting and opening to our experience with wise and compassionate responses.”

This is not martyrdom!