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Showing posts from May, 2023

thoughts on regenerative paradigms.

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  the truth calls for revelation, and I find that most truths come wordlessly, without a label. what we usually can point at and box into a right or wrong form is usually as ephemeral as the mind that recognized it. lately, idealists (myself included) have been obsessed with paradigms that regenerate the world, nurture it and find ways to honour its complexities. the narrative these paradigms tell are enticing and elusively mind-provoking, they are also ones that sacredly make you want to leave everything behind to fix the world and be an agent or vessel of elegant transformation. however, being in the midst of that, I have found that the more time we spend judging the world and pointing at the behaviours of our ancestors as wrong, selfish and diabolical, the more we divide, the more we fall into the trap of feeing superior just because we know better. in my work, having read all about ways to make my classroom more regenerative, I found myself judging the people who have built constra

a timeless contentment.

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the field of my heart was carrying the weight of all the weeds that inflicted its harmonious presence. weeds that monstrously depleted the original authenticity in my world that had been designed upon sheer, timeless contentment. oh, how arduous it is to live in guilt and shame for not being enough. the burden of excusing contentment until we sort things out, until we feel more sure of ourselves, more defined by our values. how hard it was for me these months feeling a deep insufficiency for not owning my expectations and living them deeply. and this shameful narrative in my head replaying a useless, fearful record which I know now was not even real.  how convinced I was that I was doing everything wrong, that I was failing, that I didn’t have what it took to light up the world. how persuasive is this story in my head that haunts me deep into the night, stirring for some sleep, waking up with aches that stop me from wanting to try again. a fatal flaw, perhaps. it will never change. I’l

the courtesy of presence.

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  it’s all in my head. time, experience, judgement. one impression to the next and one field of emotion to the other. static sparks intersecting at a continuum so achingly swift, so formidably dull. I collapse on my bed unable to stop my thoughts. I see the noise of the day, the hassle, the interruptions of my peace. I stir for hours and even when I do fall asleep, it is unconscious, tiring, unfiltering. the time that was yesterday is not very different from the time that is now. it’s still all here somehow. I just hate it when this happens— when there’s so much to break free from in brokenness. I wonder if the problem is me, or the noise, or the busyness of my day, or the never ending to-do list that seems to need tedious polishing all the time. I do not seek perfection in my life, and I still wonder where all this comes from. I wonder why my head just never stops drifting to the temporariness. but I’m taking a deep breath now. it’s courtesy I’m inhaling. the courtesy of revering the

the courtesy of letting go, and doing our parts.

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I must admit that I do spend most of my time thinking about the big picture— the convoluted complexities and consequences of a single decision rippling across an entire system. since it’s been an inherent trait, I didn’t find it difficult to emerge to the adult world in that perspective.  yet, I must say that being constantly aware of the bigger picture and to keep implying how a single action could affect the whole is an exhaustive way to be in this world. often times, I feel helpless. my idealism beats me up when I make mistakes, since they find a way to inform me about the implications of my decisions on the psyche of the ones around me. in the midst of all this, sometimes there is no right thing to do, for you do not see the preferred end goal rippling out into the brokenness and imperfection of our lives. I’ve fallen into this trap so many times, and the epiphany guides me towards the courtesy of honouring the bubble of whole-heartedly doing my part in the whole. idealists often l

undoing the fear between us.

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my love, I surrendered to the courtesy of this distance between us, the silence of two hearts in love with God in sight. in this vast, often guilty, non-doing, one rests in the sweetness of the foreordained, the timelessness of it, even through patience that stretches out in eons. all pain fades away. I noticed how I fall into the glamour of believing I could avoid the pits between me and this deep, universal love. receiving the gift of dreaming and seeing a glimpse of wholeness, in my existing human blindness, I thought it my responsibility to orchestrate the divine. to craft the becoming of it. to effortfully be too much of it. but, no.. love is a path of eased surrender. quite paradoxically, the formidable part. the fragment that I am is my utmost seed. the vast scapes of love in it. the worship through it. the smallness of being courteous towards it taking its time, doing its part, and surrendering that it, too, lights the sky. in this silence and this space, I surrender who we are

to return..

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the world returns to itself each spring each morning do this, I don’t know how to undress the time of past unwrap, untie detangle detach. bareness the simply true is dawnlight falling upon my sleep. to wake is the return of blackbird song notes on the canvas of cloud do this, I don’t know how to stream from tear to ground seed the expanse of trees and still make no sound. it falls on me to return so effortless so in ease is not some light of mine but one merciful, divine .

she is a cloud..

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hey.. I’m here. it’s okay.  I extend my hands, shuffling them for an answer. the mud is thick, inexorably so. I begin to wonder if it’s possible to breathe out here, and whether she had spent all this time panting in shallow breaths. please, just hold my hand. all I hear is silence. the sinking realisation that I won’t receive much from my efforts weighs me down. it is the kind of reaching out that has to happen with the heart’s eye. I see you , I whisper. she’s holding her knees up to her chest, hiding her face, smothered from the mud. her skin is fragile, almost cracked, her bones protruding miserably. I wish I could hear her cries, but it’s the silence of being swallowed by neglect. a lonely wave that drifted off into the narrowest container and is finally free to keep crashing violently onto the cracks of her skin to finally break something. although it’s dark in this corner of my heart she has chosen to sink in, I sit next to her, and she does not stir. her numbness is loud, so lo

i want to be shared with the world.

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I look around my room before I leave. I scan it to make sure the wires are in their right places, but I can’t help but notice the dreams that surface before the gaze: these walls are cemented in visions instead of whatever keeps them intact. leaving, I realise they’re not only dreams. they’re painful moments, too. I hear the screams these walls have heard, the walls that witnessed me falling to the ground as I was being beaten, my belongings crashing into a million pieces and my pillow soaked in hours-long streams of tears. this blanket has touched my chest pent up with a longing dimmed with hopelessness. my carpets have been dusted with the debris of all my unsettled anxieties of never knowing how to move on with my life. my body often stops itself from seeing home. it’s almost an out-of-body experience to be living here. I step outside of myself into denial and numbness to be able to forget what this home was built by— and when denial gets too close to bursting into deep, inscrutable