A Collection of Essays From A Visionary

Preface

You are about to enter into something extraordinary--into something special and unique experience. If it is not, then it must be my own failing or the failings of things and circumstances that are beyond my power.

There is none that I would appeal to you but to your common senses and yet this must be my greatest struggle--the struggle of this desire to fully impart to you an enlightenment of the soul; in order that my visions will also be your visions.

Something magical has happened to me and the new reality that was laid upon me is one that even in my wildest dreams did not happen. If it would only be up to me, I would call this experience the most important phenomenon ever to happen to humanity in the present day, while we breathe the air of this mortal world. And perhaps, if circumstances allow, I would call it “the new sensation”.

To believe or not to believe my revelation is upon your own discretion. But this is what the truth as it is laid before me.

The angels appeared to me--and still appearing every now and then--often as the night sky is still early into the evening, and while the wind is very fragile yet gentle upon the weather. They first appeared to me sometime in the year of two thousand two, sometime and somewhere in the month of July while I walked the streets of Manila to pursue a career in law. They roved among the clouds to tromp in gaiety, wandering from one part of the night sky towards another, turning the horizon into a giant movie screen, in order to exhibit their plays and meanderings. They made signs not conversation--pure pantomime--but they were as lucid and evocative. If I read the signs well, that would be a question of faith and credibility.

I saw them enacting the man clearing drainage with a long wooden pole. I saw a man holding the hands of another with others following in line, holding each other’s hands and walking towards a destination. There was the image of a traffic officer pointing also towards a place, and that was upward following a line of cloud leading towards the sky, while just beneath him was a long line sloping downward.

They came through the clouds from one end of the sky towards another as more visions appeared before me such as the winged horses trotting thru and fro, the swords of the angels, a giant mushroom cloud and an ancient ship with sails swept by a strong wind, traversing an ocean that was the night sky. I saw repeatedly a huge wooden face similar in features to the figure we see on masts of ancient tribes.

If any one would have been at the same time looking towards the sky, they would have observed that the clouds were so dynamic that at any one point, images of many articles and objects appeared, and they appeared to me to be messages from the sky. This must have been how ancient people developed their alphabets, by signs and symbols to evoke a certain thought or fact.

The angels made crossing signs with their arms, as if to seek recognition of their presence that I also made the same gestures—like a handshake perhaps. And there was a bearded man, with long hair sitting on a huge throne, with the widest grin in his face, seemingly orchestrating the entire show in the night sky.
It was on those nights also that my mind seemed to be awake while I sleep. In slumber, my mind would become a colorful movie screen that I have dreams so vivid that I felt I was almost living in those dreams—alive and breathing. One of those memorable dreams was about a handsome young man standing on the side of a pool, with many women wading their legs in the pool. This particular dream started when a man in black turban and black robes was climbing a low barren hill. My sight was behind this turbaned man and I was sort of floating just above him. As the man reached the top of the hill, he peaked towards the other side, using stealth and care, as if he was wary of observers. The hill would lead to a depression of land in a semi-circling shape, like a bowl, that at the bottom was a large pool with many women wading in it.

There was this handsome man standing at the farther side of the pool, to the upper-right corner from where my sight was positioned, his skin was bronze and gleaming and he wore a measly garment covering his lower body. The man stared back so intensely towards the direction of the turbaned man, with brows furrowed signaling his disgust of an ascertained intrusion. Despite the relative distance of the hilltop and despite the use of great care, he had known exactly where the turbaned man was and had an inkling of the wicked intention to peep, as if the handsome man had a power of sight and premonition. And the dream faded away.

In one of those dreams, I saw a bearded man also looking towards the sky while standing upon a hill, with a turban in his head, and robes in beautiful black hue. Like me, he was also looking towards the sky, sifting the horizon for declarations. This was a relatively short dream that it felt like the snap shot of a camera.

In one of those dreams, I saw soldiers riding wild stallions as the horses furiously trod a desert to vanquish the enemies waiting ahead, ready to do battle. I saw this particular vision while I was floating above the wild stallions. It was a noisy dream that I felt somewhat rattled by the rumblings of horses’ foot threading the earth so furiously and It was so real that I almost felt the ground tremble upon the ferocity of the stampede.

In another dream, I was in the middle of a gathering of monks in their orange robes, walking among them in the crowd, readying eagerly for some forthcoming ritual or important ceremony. Each one of them was up in spirit, going thru and fro, minding each other’s concerns, shouting and belching at one another to straighten up this and rearrange that. Generally, there was great feeling excitement as the sun was full in the morning and because of such fullness, it had a glow that was a little bit yellow.

In one of those dreams I had found myself standing at the head of a huge ship, with many other ships on the wayside, approaching gradually a wide shore where the land was barren that I could see no greeneries whatsoever. Smoke and fog rises from the arid ground as the water was so still that as we sailed along, there was silence that was uncanny and the little splashes of waves, as gentle wind swept by, was the only sound we hear. There were many persons aboard with me in that ship, all silent and sullen like there was a great tragedy that awaits us the moment we went ashore. They must have been soldiers anticipating a pre-destined battle-- full of bloodshed, full of mayhem.

These dreams were so different from each other that I could not tread them in order to come up with a single message. All of the dreams seemed speak of events happening in the ancient past, seeming memories hidden somewhere in the mazes of my mind. They were almost real that I could remember the details even as I write this and they were so clear and lucid that I have searched my waking memory for movies that I may have seen in the past; assuming maybe that some of those dreams were merely repetitions of scenes that I have seen in movies. And there was no particular movie in my mind.

Unlike the visions, the images of my dreams did not have a clear message to declare.

Then came the most memorable night of all; the night when I saw an angel danced. There was the angel in long white robes with a hair length that reaches downward to its feet, with wings so lengthy that it filled half the sky that was in my view.

The angel danced with its hands swaying thru and fro, from left to right, and towards other directions, the hands in circling motions. It was a beautiful dance that it was almost familiar to me. The dancing angel instructed me to follow the dance and I followed it. First the angel kept on extending its arms so wide as if to invoke my repetition. I replicated its extended arms and the angel nodded. Then as the angel made each movement, I followed. When all the motions of the dance was finally revealed to me, the angel made a crossing sign with its arms, signaling the end of a lesson.

Until now, I recreate the dance over and over again. The dance was so magical that each time I recreate it I could feel an overall lightness of my being, of my body and soul, that it was sort of addictive, clearly a propagator of habit.

As I dance the dance of the angle, there is a force in my hands that startled me at first but to which I have grown accustomed to as days went by. It is a force that I could feel somehow strongly that it is impossible to disregard it or deny its existence. It is a force also that moves my entire body or at least interfering with the usual movements I make. It is such a palpable force in my hands that almost I could catch the wind. My hands until now seem to float above the wind whenever I put my open palms against any parallel surfaces.

This experience is so magical that in fact, as I make my every move, I could feel a force within and without me, sort of behind me, sort of apart from me and yet somehow also inside me. I developed a queer movement of my body since.

And there were also the little men on the wall in front of my reading table. There were actually two men aboard a boat, one sitting in front while the other one is sitting at the back. They made movements and signs in order to relay messages and they are contained in this book, as well as the messages from angels I saw in the night sky. This a book about the messages from the angels, those divine beings that are apart and certainly above us, ultimately coming from the Father of Angels, God, the Creator of All Things. How I was able to impute these messages to God is a matter of utilizing my common awareness upon the nature of angels. This is also a book on things that comes upon my realization, as I look into myself in consequence of the visions in the night sky. I will relay them to you while imploring upon the guidance of the divinity--whether they are of wisdom or of fallacy.

There is a message that the angels wanted to impart to us all. And this is the message as summarized in one sentence: “There is a voyage towards life hereafter and every one is invited”. To fully understand, please read on my brothers and sisters, so that we all may be aboard the ship that would take us to the Promised Land. Follow my footsteps.

Those who have eyes let them see. Those who have ears let them hear. These are my visions and let it be your visions also.


Chapter 1

The Night of Angels

It is in the early hours of the night that they come amidst the marching clouds, when the wind was fragile and the moon was somewhere out of sight. Clouds of all sizes and magnitude swayed like sailboats and ships in an ever-moving sea. They remain vague to my naked eyes until I train it a little further and gain more focus. Then the clouds would take shapes of all sizes, of men with great wings of the widest span, The images of angels appeared to me, as we know them in lore and stories of old, handsome in their white robes and wings white as pearls, signaling to me the messages that they desired to convey, in beautiful and graceful pantomime, vividly staging what to me was the greatest show ever witnessed by my mortal eyes. In some instances, winged horses appeared in the sky, just as handsome and nearly as graceful. And to emphasize their messages, the clouds would also take the form of other things, such as ships, a traffic enforcer, a man clearing a canal, a beautiful woman, and a giant mushroom cloud. And the most enigmatic of all these vision was a very endearing bearded man, with hair lengthy and full, with a big grin on his face, sitting on a huge throne. If I was not mistaken, he looked like Jesus Christ.
The cacophony of visions came through a span of many nights that until now, as I looked towards the sky, night or day, the clouds would take shape and there would appear “the greatest show on Earth”, to repeat and reiterate the messages, to make known that they have come to fulfill a promise that was given to us in a time before us. The angels have come indeed.

They have these wings with span nearly double their heights, and physical features that could easily be described as epitomizing the perfection of the human body. Indeed, the sight of them is so invigorating that I could feel a certain surge in my heart whenever they appear--such feeling of happiness and lightness.

There is also a feeling of being overwhelmed by the sight of an amazing grace, a view of an unparalleled beauty whenever the angels appear. A feeling of being subdued by a higher being that in my mind I vowed and declared full obedience to them and sought their utmost consideration. I asked for understanding of my being a lesser man, for the sins of my past and of the present, nearly confessing all my sins where my memory could reach them and seeking forgiveness as I avowed repentance.

The angels came through the clouds in order to impart to us a message so full of hopes and promises, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and to lead us towards a place and time that has been murmured and whispered to us from the beginning until the end of times. They have come to invite us all to follow their footsteps towards a voyage that would take us to a land full of joy and happiness, towards an everlasting life, in a world in which all men are brothers and sisters with no regard for race or creed. Where conflict becomes a thing of the past. “Where there is no more pain, sorrow, and suffering. Where there is even be no more second death.” [1]

The Creator of All Things—God-- have prepared for us a new Earth, a paradise reborn somewhere in one of the constellation found in the universe, and there would be many worlds to dwell, as well as mansions in the clouds. The worthy shall have wings of great span where the entire universe is a place for us to wander upon, an infinite territory for us to dwell, without the limitations of our present habitat.

One may ask, why have the angels come? Why at this point in time? Is the end of the world nearly approaching? Have they come to punish us? Or have they come to bring the graces of the Lord?

The message is but singular, of a voyage towards a life hereafter and everyone is invited. Those who are chosen shall be aboard the ship and theirs is the rewards of Heaven.

Underlying the invitation towards the Kingdom of God is a message for us to follow the way of the righteous and not that of the blind. It is a time for spiritual reawakening to the true meaning of our faith and the meaning of our existence here on Earth. It is a wake-up call to all of us, to work for changes and to heal this world from the many evils that holds it down like a monkey wrench. It is a time for us to prepare our souls for the coming voyage.

A spiritual renewal and reawakening of humanity must come soon and a world of understanding and harmony must be pursued in order to cleanse our world of the many evils that have pervaded within and around us. It is for us to thwart the many evils that had enveloped our everyday lives as well as the many great evils that give this world its present fragility.

Global terrorism and racial wars are stains to the very idea of a livable world, as God had intended it to be, as men nowadays kill in the name of false pride and false dignity, upon groundless assumptions and flawed conclusions.

Jews are greedy some say and soon conflict arises. Arabs are bloodthirsty and discrimination easily prevails. America is the great evil some say and upheaval takes place violently while the real evil permeates somewhere else. Europeans are imperious, they say and isolation results. Asians are too close-minded, and prejudice takes strength.

And ultimately, one Christian is against one Moslem and one Jew would be against one Christian.

These are causes of conflicts that are hounding us today and many times in the past and these causes, if we examined them closely, are grossly spurious and groundless; when the truth of the matter is that many conflict we face today merely arises from the basic evils each of us suffers. The envy and hate of one man injures another man. The envy and hate of many men injures the peace of the world. In order to repeal the great evils that harms us in a global scale, it is but time to heal ourselves with the many and “common” evils we face everyday.

If we could not defeat the evils in each and every one of us, then how could we aim to defeat the great evils that hound the entire humanity? All great evils come from the small evils in each man. For the devil implants in us a seed of evil and this seed would grow into full fruition if we do not stifle them with great faith in God and in the righteousness of man. In order to change the world, it is essential to change the self first.

In our everyday lives, many evils occur around us that their incidence have already reached a certain level of acceptability, as if they are merely part of our everyday life-- a routine, a culture, a habit.

Men in government steal everyday and we say there goes just another government man. Men gossip against another everyday, and we just say there goes another gossiper. Men lie in order to gain advantage almost every time, and he is just another opportunist.

There are many in our midst—a neighbor or a co-worker-- who covet another man’s wife or lust upon another man’s daughter or son, and yet they are not so much already as a surprise to us all. And everyday many lives are taken due to the violence of some men; and while indeed killing is ever contemptible, we could not anymore escape their seeming ordinariness.

We must repel these “common” evils and rebel strongly to their occurrences. To lie and to gossip may be small faults and yet does a gossiper enter the Kingdom of God? Of course not; for a habitual gossiper would only disrupt the peace and harmony in Paradise. Therefore, to gossip then is just similar to steal and that of to kill. If to gossip is never to enter the Kingdom of God, then what makes it less detestable than to kill? (A lesser punishment perhaps for a lesser crime.)

There might be the cognizance of lesser crimes as compared to graver crimes but why should we risk losing the Kingdom of God with lesser sins when both the gossiper and the murderer shall be cast away from the Promised Land and thrown into “the vengeance of an eternal fire”[2].

What we need today is a total cleansing of our spiritual selves, to go back to the roots of basic ethics as declared to us in countless ways and in too many instances, over and over again, whether in The Torah or in The Holy Bible or in the Noble Qu’ran. For all these books, no matter the discrepancy of their roots, declares adherence to the same basic concept of ethics; a code of conduct that is uniform regardless of religion or creed for every religion is very similar in their propagation of good and the casting away of evil deeds, where stealing is intolerable as well as gossiping and where fornication is ever abominable. If every religion despises the thief and the fornicator what difference does it make then?

Let us go back to the dictates of the Holy Bible, of the Holy Qu’ran, of the Torah, or of the teachings of Buddha and Confucius. All religion preaches the propagation of goodness and the avoidance of evil and in them our salvation is secured and the dictates of the Lord God, as declared in many times and in many forms, are far too clear in fact for us to ignore them. The desires of God on how to go about our conduct were simple that to feign ignorance is almost criminal. Even if you have not read any book on religion or hear the sermon of any preacher, you could always determine what is good and what is evil by invoking the discretion of your heart and mind, and ultimately the inquiries of your conscience. For example, the act murder is absolutely disdainful for it takes away the right of another to live and causes sorrows and difficulties to the persons affected and results to vengeful hate and more violence would concur. You do not have to read the Bible or the Qu’ran in order to know that murder is wrong. We feel a burden in our hearts whenever we commit wrong. It is like a microchip imbedded to us by God so that we may not be led astray and yet many have opted to disregard this mode of self determining the propriety of our conduct, preferring to lavish their earthly instincts that leads them to no other place but hell.

Stealing is abhorred in every religion. Killing is always heinous. Adultery and fornication are pure abomination in whatever religion. Gossiping is vice always.

On the other hand, sharing is ever enriching. Helping the poor and the needy a must to us all. Very religion teaches us to love our neighbors and to have the greatest faith in God--the Creator of All things; these are conditions precedent for a man of faith.

All these dictates (in whatever book they are contained) are all very simple and easy to comprehend that we do not need extraordinary intelligence in order to know what is good and what is bad. It does not matter if the dictates came from Jesus Christ, from Abraham, from Moses, from Prophet Mohammad or from Buddha; for if we examine closely all their teachings, they are very similar to one another, that is, the propagation of the good and the avoidance of evil.

Every religion may be peculiar and unique on its own that certainly many differences arise. However, these differences are what we call marginal and does not often comes in the nature of substantial matters. These variances often come in social conducts and customs like the food we eat or the rituals of prayers yet the basic ethical dictates are generally similar. At the bottom of it all is that, it is not how we have faith in religion but how we have faith in God.

We need merely to realize the undeniable fact that God existed long before any religion arose, before the word “Catholic” or “Islam” was conceived. And God has no religion. God loves the proper and obedient may he be a Chinese, a Russian, an American, a Jew or an Arab. The Christians pray while kneeling. The Moslems touches the ground with their foreheads. The Hindus does not eat cow’s meat. The Buddhist meditates for long hours. These are differences merely in the conduct and practice of religion. For Americans eat potatoes as staple while Asians have rice on their table everyday. Europeans have wine upon every meal while the rest of us have water.

These differences are not reason for us to kill each other and be separated by prejudices for in fact the differences among us was meant to make this world more livable, to have synergy and diversity of existence; so that a true brotherhood of man could be attained, where there is the acceptance that your brother may not look like you but still he is your brother.

For how could we ever imagine a world of Catholics all in faith or of a world of Asians all in race? The world then would be an existence of monotony, without assortment and diversity, and that would be a boring and insufferable world. When variety does not take place, no one would travel anymore in order to learn the unknown, for the conditions in other places and continents would just be the same as the place where one is coming from. And all the things that are found there are also found in the place where you are. Trade would not prosper if every civilization in the past produced silk, mined gold, molded porcelains and grow spices, olive oils, cotton and tea--all at the same time. There would been no Spanish galleons and Chinese junks crossing oceans in the past. The Spaniard would not have met and known the existence of the Chinese man half a world away.

No one would have asked questions on the nature and peculiarity of other men if all of them looked the same, with the same facial features, the same body structure, the same culture, and hence the same character. Why would I be interested in you if in fact you are just the same as me? I would not have the usual motive to know you and to get acquainted with you, in order to inquire more upon your conditions in life, about your family, and your occupation if you are just the same as me. I would not have converse with you with the same level of interest as when you have blond hair and stand so tall while in contrast I am short and have brown skin. I would not be able to understand you as much, for our monogamy in person would make me inquire about you lesser.

Let us not the differences in race and creed divide us but instead let them allow us towards unify and enhanced understanding among people of different race and creed. We are brothers all, born from the same Creator, the same Maker. We all must agree that all things come from the one Creator, the only one God. We are all the offspring of God.

Indeed, the rewards of the obedient are bountiful and aplenty beyond expectations and the punishment for those who have been defiant to the dictates of the Creator shall be of suffering that is also beyond the boundaries of our human comprehension. The reward is an everlasting life of joy and happiness in the Kingdom of God while the punishment is never-ending suffering and castigation in hellfire.


CHAPTER 2

The Dance of Life

In one of those nights of enchantment, while the wind remained fragile and ethereal, a collection of thin clouds gathered in the middle of the sky and formed the image of an angel. As the vision fortified, I could see the angel clearly. This angel was different from the rest that I have seen before for this angel had hair so long that it reaches the area of its feet, and wearing a long white robe. The angel must have been a woman or a man with all too lengthy hairs. I just could not tell at that time because the distance from the ground to the sky is of course immense even if the image of the vision was larger than their actual size. Then the angel spread its wings of the widest span and I stared diligently. For some moment, the angel kept on motioning its wings to spread so wide until I felt like imitating it and the angel nodded. So I spread my two arms as wide as the wings of the angel. Then the angel showed its arms and its hands making some varied movements with it, the hands in an open palm position. After some moment, the angel placed its hands in the middle of its body, somewhere near its chest, both open palms facing its other. After a moment, the hands made a movement that brought the hands and arms towards the left side, with the hands remaining in an open palm position. The hands came back to the middle-of-chest position. After a moment, the hands went into a looping motion towards the right side. After that, the hands went back to the middle-of-chest position. The angel kept repeating the basic routines and I kept following and imitating the hand movements until the angel made complicated movements with its hands and arms, a circling motion towards all directions, towards above and towards down low, towards the east and west of its body, to north-west and south-east, it became so intricate that I failed to catch up further with the angel that I stopped following. The Angel ended the hands movement and crossed its arms in front of its chest, as if saying, “so long” and slowly faded away.

I pondered upon the significance of the vision of the dancing angel. Was it another message? If it were, what would the message be when by all means of analogy, the graceful movement of the angel’s hands does not bring to mind any symbols or signs that declare some fact or issue. It was merely a combination of movements, some sort of calisthenics.

I went to bed that night heavy with thoughts. I had felt so strongly that somewhere in my memory, the sight of the dance had already occurred to me. It was a familiar display of movements that it was not that strange to me anymore to witness such spectacle. I was pretty sure of that, as if everything was a memory, a sort of a déjà vu. There was wonderment that spawned a glee in my heart. A giddiness resulting from a discovery of something that I never thought could happen before. The divinity was starting to reach out to the mortals, and this reality finally kicked in.

The following morning, while the air was still pregnant with heavy mist and early dawn enveloped the still hushed streets of Manila--while many eyes were still shut in deep slumber--I stood up and recreated the dance of the angel that I have witnessed in the sky the night before. I made the movements to the left of my body and then towards the right and then towards the middle, my palms were open and my arms were extended. I repeated and repeated the movements that the angel had made. It was sort of surprising that I was recreating the dance all too easily as if I have been dancing it routinely before, as if it was my own dance, except that the complicated movements were harder to recreate. It was like putting on a very familiar cloth, merely feeling a second skin.

As I made the movements again and again, I could feel a palpable surge in my spirit, an embalming feeling of lightness that I could not stop moving my hands. After some moments, I could feel a certain force in my hands, a kind of magnetic field to be more particular, that I just left my hands to move on its own. And my hands would indeed move independently by themselves! I merely let them sway to the will of the force that controlled it and then my hands were finally able to recreate the complicated movements of the angel, the ones that I found difficult to remake. It was purely magical, an out-of-this-world experience. My hands were floating and my spirit rising.

It was indeed an awakening for me, a sudden realization that the new reality set forth before me was something I did not expect even in my wildest dreams. How do you expect anyone to really believe in angels, anyway? There are mythical things that I had easily disregarded before, to be merely staple of fantasy movies, of fairy tales, and one of such beings are the angels. And then they were happening and I had to accept it. For how could I still deny that phenomenon when there was already a palpable force in my hands, a force that is already controlling to a certain extent the movements of my body? Tears flowed from my eyes like a river for I felt an overwhelming feeling of enchantment and of being so fortunate of having been given the privileged to feel these very unusual but all too beautiful experience. As a result, I was already conversing to a one that I call “My Lord”, in whispers and in my mind.

I kept saying, “Thank you my Lord for letting me have these enchanting experience and if it goes away tomorrow, or disappears from me altogether, I would still be forever grateful to you for now something has been fortified in me; that is, my faith in God, the Creator of all things great and small.”

Day after day, at dawn and at near midnight, I kept recreating the dance and continue to feel the enlightenment that it afforded my inner self. Addictive is a word I shall use if I have to describe it. It is also habit forming that at times when my guards were down, I made the movements even if I was in the law library of San Beda, the school where I was reviewing for the bar examination, reading law books after law books endlessly. It was very useful to me that whenever I felt the stress of too much reading, the movements had refreshed my mind and body. There were those that had been able to observed me doing the movements showed immediate curiosity with some hidden smirk on their faces thinking perhaps that I had gone insane. But still many of them showed genuine interest and inquired about it and I just tell them that it was a meditation which I use to manage stress and that I have learned it from a book I’ve read about ancient Chinese meditation. The “meditation lie” was a comfortable white lie.

Upon its enriching qualities, I have on myself inquired on the very nature of the dance. As a student of laws and as an avid reader of many established philosophies, I always had the inquiring mind ready whenever I am faced with questions that have no ready answers. I have always approached every premise upon a hypothesis, attacking every unknown idea with scientific processes, a mode that I have learned through years of education. I have exhausted all possible explanation and yet I could not find any established notion to explain the nature of the dance, in concordance with the vision of the angels. The only explanation I had then was that divinity is a reality and that it is now setting forth its presence at this point in time, reasserting its existence and dominion where for many years and centuries, it had gotten lost in the great advancement that man had achieve in so short a period of time. Reasserting its existence in a time when humans can already be cloned and computers are nearly reaching the point of independent thought; a time of extraordinary progress for human intelligence.

I looked further into myself for explanation to these visions while quelling any hope of explaining it scientifically, for no scientific processes could dissect it properly. As I danced the dance of the angel, I studied the beautiful movements I was making, what they evoke and what their purposes are. I took faith in my own notions and my head kept nodding independently as if someone invincible was saying, “Go ahead, your notions are true”. So I looked deeper into myself and interpreted the dance as the manner of creating Heaven and Earth, as the Divine One had done in a time before us.

The hands evoked earth, wind, water and fire. I had called the dance, “The Dance of Life” since.
The dance on another view connotes the harmony of existence of life here on Earth. An earth there, but not too much earth. Water thereat, but not too much water. Fire in this part of existence, but not too much fire. Wind that blows from all directions, but not too much wind.

Everything that is lacking has desperation written on it but on the other hand, whatever is in excess is scoffing by its nature. There must be balance in life. When this balance ceases, everything falls down.

Indeed, the dance speaks of the balance and harmony of existence, of how the world and the existence in universe should be. So every man would do himself or herself the greatest good by treating his or her person as a universe of its own, putting a balance to it, therefore attaining harmonious existence within and without him.

In every action, the man should have a ready instinct of inquiring upon every act, whether this would harm the body and soul or would it harm others. How does my action affect the harmony of my own existence as well as that of others? If I harm others, would it be possible that they would also harm me? If I speak against this person, would he or she not speak of me also in a bad light?

This is a mode inculcated to us by nature, this questioning mind--the very spirit of our conscience for that matter. But somehow, through years of conditioning, we dispel them as easily, in order to look out merely for the greatest benefit to the self no matter how they harm others. As we propagate this kind of mode of action, our world becomes limited because we are always hiding from someone we harmed before. We deviate from going to places where others whom we have harmed or injured before may pass along. And the ones we harmed would limit their universes as well, trying so earnestly to evade us. And the self becomes a limited universe, a disharmonious existence, and an existence of disarray. Nobody wants to live in this kind of universe. And ultimately God would not want to grant a boundless existence to those who by their own mischief and indiscretion had limited their own universe because the Universe of God is boundless and infinite, and no one who is full of mischief would be allowed to enter this Universe that God had promised us even at the beginning of times, for they are a threat to the harmony of a limitless, boundless, and unending Universe of God.

For it was often said before that in order not to fall to the wayside, a man must have balance in life to be able to stand up straight. Even the physical act of walking, balance must concur or else the man walking would stumble. It is undeniable that the existence of man today (in his temporary sojourn in this material world) is a perpetual traipsing between good and evil, between the excessive and the wanting, between love and hate. He had to maneuver carefully to retain the balance; a condition that is desirable; for the road ahead is always fraught with temptations, those excessive pleasures of the devil, that form the manholes of our morality.

The balance of man that I speak is not too similar to the bodily balance a man must attain in the very physical act of walking. This balance of man has an unusual fulcrum because the more you go to one side (that is, towards the side of goodliness) the better balance you would have. It is the balance of man between the good and the evil. The balance of a man is an idea that propels us to believe in our selves, of our being human, the most beautiful and glorified creation of God, for it has been declared time and time again that “man was created in the image of God Himself”, and thence its purpose of being is to become the exemplification of the ideal creation, closer to the perfection of God.

The material world is a training ground for us, a milling factory of the soul, a litmus test for every man that whomsoever attained the qualities that our Creator had dictated to us as the ideal human being, as often relayed to us in old lore and holy books, and through many examples, like the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the life of the Enlightened One known to many of us as Buddha, the adventures of those knights in shining armor, the travails of Robin Hood, the diligent boy scout that assist the old in crossing the street, the courage and valor of the revolutionary hero fighting the cause of an oppressed people, the causes Martin Luther King, Jr. stood for, the sacrifices made by Indira Ghandi, the gallantry of Joan of Arc, the charity of Mother Teresa, the genius of Jose Rizal, and the liberty and freedom of Abraham Lincoln. They are the goodliness of man that had been attained before by mortals like us and there is no reason that every man could not attain this level of humanity even while in his or her daily existence.

The balance that the man has to attain is a shield against the mischief of evil, for evil is ever present and ever threatening in the present world that we live in, in order to sway us to the dark side and pull us down towards everlasting suffering and pain in what was termed in the Bible as “the vengeance of an eternal fire”.

Evil will permeate in us if we lose the self--the ideal self--that there are times that we feel the urges to commit things we instinctively feel as abominable. And because these urges are at most times irrepressible, we would indeed commit these abominations. For as angels are supernatural in form (material at one time and spirit at other times), and so are demons that whenever they find a imbalanced man (due to his lack of faith in the Creator and in the ideal self), they come in and conquer the fragile self, to dictate the will in order to lead the person to commit acts and deeds that defile the self. They feast upon the man’s primordial feeling of envy and prejudice and upon other human instincts and imperfections, and propagate their culture of madness, a culture of irresponsible pleasures and of impatience. Often we feel so discontented and frustrated that we often come to the point of intending and committing defiant acts such as gossiping, stealing and fornicating in order to satiate our impatient urges, desires and pleasures. And there are those who would even kill or harm another man’s life just to satisfy their frustrations-- such is the nature of evil. There are many who would covet their neighbor’s wife or daughter to satiate the irresponsible dictates of the flesh, to use authority to gain flesh from some innocent victim. There are men who would fornicate upon irresponsible desires of the flesh. Lust is an instinct of man that is often used by demons to sway the soul towards the fold of darkness for it is in lust that men have the greatest weakness.

Many would kill for no other reason but prejudice and envy, many would steal to present themselves falsely as more worthy of wealth than others or to falsely present themselves as more privileged. This is the nature of evil.

The demons are very invasive that they come into our persons like water into a vessel and urge us to commit abominations. As the man possessed takes pleasures from these evil acts, the demons, which have conquered him, take the more pleasures from it. After we committed these misdeeds, we often feel a feeling of resentment (as we somehow regain our human self after the demons flee our body), realizing the very nature of the acts we have committed, to realize so belatedly the nature and consequences of such misdeeds.

But if we have the strength of faith, the fortitude of God’s teachings and dictates, and the belief in the ideal self, the demons would never succeed in pushing us to fall on the wayside, to lose our balance, and the Kingdom of God is for us to dwell after we leave this temporary world.

There are already many among us however, who do not feel any feeling of remorse after the commission of a misdeed, however grave they may be. It is a condition attained where the conscience have already been numbed and stunted due to repetition of misdeeds, over and over again. The thief would certainly feel the pangs of remorse the first time he would commit the evil act of stealing. On the second commission of theft, there would still be remorse but not as heavy as the first time. After committing the act of stealing over and over again, the thief would lose his conscience altogether and starts to feel that it is but all right to commit such act and so thieving becomes ordinary for him.

The murderer would also feel in the same manner. His conscience would be numbed with repeated acts of killing. The first time he killed, the face of his victim would hound him until he toss and turn in his bed, but after many more commissions, there would be not as much qualms, and he would take life as if he was just strolling in the park.

The fornicator who commits such abomination over and over again would also have a numbed and stunted conscience. The first time that the adulterer ravished the flesh, he must have felt so burdened by such act of abomination. But after repeated commission of irresponsible sexual conducts, he would have no more conscience to bear with.

There would be no more conscience to speak of in a highly imbalanced man for he had already allowed himself to be a follower of the devil, where as a result he and the demon who had perturbed him becomes already of the same breed and of the same kind. And both shall indeed be cast into the “vengeance of an eternal fire”[3].

It is the evil that haunts us that we should always look out for. For example as to the sin of flesh (the temptations of lust), the doers of fornication would surely feel the heaviness of his or conscience the moment the commission of such abomination takes place and to commit this confusion of man, they would have to take in alcohol and drugs in order to numb this heavy conscience. And with repeated commission of such confusion of the mind and heart, the fornicator would entirely lose the checking mechanism of the heavy conscience. Such is the nature of evil.

But to the man who takes great faith in the Creator, and believe in the very purpose and nature of man, as he was created, in order to do good and avoid evil, demons could not conquer and deceit them. Every attempt to disturb him with deceit would be futile and useless when he has the strongest faith in his human self and in the Creator who had born him. And he shall be allowed to persist in an everlasting life of peace and harmony in the life hereafter--a life full of joy--sliding over just moments after he perishes from this material world. He shall reap the rewards of God and he shall have wings of the greatest span where Heaven is an infinite universe for himspread his wings. There would be many mansions to choose from, castles in the clouds, a Paradise reborn, and many worlds of different kind to visit, for indeed it is an entire universe of existence in which for us to dwell---this Kingdom of God.

Those who cultivate their hearts, their sympathy for others, and their faith in the Creator, to follow His edicts and judgments shall have wings of the greatest span. The balance of man is rooted in the sympathetic heart, a pure and loving heart, and a rational and understanding heart. When we cultivate our sympathy for others with love, faith, hope and charity, we create a footing on the ground beneath our feet, where no storm could shake it and no evil could transgress such valiant stand. “Though I may walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.”[4]


Chapter 3
The Democracy of Good Deeds and The Communism
Of Bad Deeds

Goodliness is the absence of ugliness. It is the idea of the basic goodness of man that the angels want to propagate in order to attain a harmonious co-existence among men in this material world; where violence and other forms of evil are ever permeating.

It is often said that to err is human. Indeed the man is said to be imperfect that it is almost impossible to see in your mind's eye the perfect goodliness of man. It is in fact upon these premise that I seek to push the idea of a mode of action I shall call now “The Democracy of Good Deeds and the Communism of Bad Deeds”.

It is upon the point of imperfection of man that we should find motivation to improve the spiritual self for indeed to be human is to be imperfect. Let us not tolerate however the idea that “I am human therefore I sin”, but rather “I am human and therefore I err”. Now, is it merely to err to steal millions of people’s money? It is merely to err to fornicate without any sense of responsibility? Is it merely to err to sexually abuse your work subordinates? Is it merely to err to kill another human being? Is it human to err so gravely?

It is not that we should demand upon ourselves to evade every mistake (it would be unrealistic), but it is for us to deviate from doing deeds that are gravely wrong. There are deeds committed by men that are so grievously abominable that there is no room for reasoning out that they are merely mistakes or errors of judgments. Certainly, to kill a man just because of his race is purely a mistake or an error no more. It is purely evil to commit acts or deeds that are intentionally propagated by men to harm or injure others, patently debased of morals and principles.

Just the same as with fornication where men take great pleasures from the indiscriminate lavishing of the flesh, without regards to responsibility and consequences.

Just as so to the very greedy businessman who takes all the wealth for himself disregarding the labor of his workers, to undervalue the fruits of another man’s labor, for a man may have hundreds of acres of land but without workers to help him produce wealth from such land, it is virtually useless to him—he might as well sell it.

Just the same with the government official who routinely steals money from the finances of the government; for the act of altering accounting records is not a mere error of judgment anymore.

The idea that I am promoting here is the concept that men should always be conscious and cognizant about every action or words that he make in his everyday life; to be fully aware of its effects to himself as well as to others; for every action has a two-pronged effect, that is, the effect on the self and the effect on others.

If I speak these words, how does it benefit me and how does it affect others? That is the basic question that should be inculcated in each and every one of us, as if to allow such mechanism of thought to be already a second skin to us, a habit that could not be easily broken—to have that perpetual questioning mind and heart, the very spirit of the inner workings of our consciences.

One may argue that this concept of constant awareness to every word or action may curtail the spontaneity of human interactions. We must not however be very particular about this disadvantage, for indeed there are many words or actions that we could do without the questioning heart and mind. Whether to drink coffee or tea, whether I would sing or dance, or whether to read or write--these are actions that do not demand proper guidance of the questioning mind and heart so that men could still flow with spontaneity in their daily conduct. But whether or not to appropriate this money knowing fully well that it is not yours is an action that requires proper contemplation just as whether to seduce this woman or not? The same as to the question of whether or not to gossip against another person or not, just the same as to the question of whether or not to help a man with an empty stomach lying on the side streets. These are deeds that demand the guidance of our questioning minds and hearts.

The concept of the democracy of good deeds is easier to illustrate and understand if every one of us treats the self as a smaller body of government. For indeed every government is either democratic or communistic, proletarian or authoritarian. “So what is my form of government?” you might ask. What is best suited for me and most beneficial to me? What form of government could enhance my spiritual self?

A purely democratic government, where there is an unhindered flow of freedom, is not ideal for as I mentioned earlier, everything in excess is scoffing by nature. Absolute freedom results to excesses.

A purely communistic government is at the same time not ideal for it would strangle us and prevent us from experiencing the true meaning of life. A suitable government for the self therefore would be a well-balanced government, not purely democratic but not also purely communistic. A government that is situated somewhere in the middle of two extremes. This form of government, if we relate it to the government of the self is what I call “The Democracy of Good Deeds and the Communism of Bad Deeds”. It is a concept of self-government that in its truest form is the propagation of all good deeds and if possible the curtailing of all bad deeds. If this concept would be attained, we would attain a certain level of goodliness that exacts the very idea of how the Creator had intended man to be--righteous and enlightened—entirely fortified in his resolve to struggle against the piercing menace of evil. For indeed, in the Kingdom of God that the Creator had promised us, no man full of evil mischief would be allowed to enter for he would merely spoil the harmony and peace among brothers and sisters existing therein.

In the democracy of good deeds and the communism of bad deeds, it is ideal that man should propagate good deeds democratically, that is without restrictions in so long as it is possible while on the other hand, bad deeds are curtailed by a government with an iron hand, a communistic attitude towards mischief.

If we say that man is of no perfection as we admitted earlier, then we must recognize the possibility of sin that in this context, man should be about ninety-five percent good in his everyday conduct and five percent bad, this five percent are for those mistakes that are committed unknowingly, a sort of a margin of error, for indeed no man is perfect. Is this concept attainable? That is the million-dollar question. It is a question that every man should ask himself every day and every hour of his life. And the ultimate question of it all is “ Have I prepared myself to enter the dwelling house of the Father?”

For certain, if one would hold this concept of the democracy of good deeds and the communism of bad deeds as proper and acceptable, one would more or less feel a sentiment of enlightenment and of a spiritual awakening.

But on the one hand we say that nobody has been perfect and every one has for one time or another, has already committed such bad deeds that this concept is not useful anymore. It is too late already as one would say, as one have already done such grievous things in the past and would never in the first place be able to prepare themselves to enter the Kingdom of God.

Do not fret and do not be disheartened. The angels have come with their messages and one of them that they brought here is the reward of repentance and then of forgiveness for man should be redeemed from the life of a blind being led by the blind. Every man would be given the privilege of repentance as long as he or she immediately recognized his past mistakes and ponder upon them and repent and confess. To accept the Creator as the only salvation, the Lord of all Lords, and shall then follow all His edicts and judgments. To go back to the churches, to the faith of the forefathers, to Jesus Christ or to Allah the Most Merciful and the Most Omnipotent, through his messenger Prophet Mohammad (Peace be Upon Him) or to Buddha the Enlightened One or to Abraham, the Father of Judaism or to the righteous commandments of Hinduism.

Repentance alone however is not enough for that would amount to false awakening. We should produce fruits from our repentance. If we have stolen a million pesos, we should recompense for this malefaction by returning the same amount to the one we have stolen from and then by committing to charity to help uplift the condition of the poorest of the poor. If we gossip against another, we should recompense for our sin by asking for the person’s forgiveness and reaching out to him or her, and making her feel loved and cared for instead of despised. The reward of repentance is so great that every one is given the opportunity to mend his or her ways and accept God back to his or her life.

Now, the inevitable question is: Are persons who committed grievous acts like murder and fornication be given the same privileged of repentance? To this question I shall say that for the sake of lasting peace and harmony, even them could be given the privilege with the same requirements of producing fruits from their repentance. To be sure, the heavier the sin, the heavier is the fruit of repentance. Murderers should face their punishment in the hands of the law and at the same time help uplift others specially the family of the victim, whenever possible. Murderers and fornicators even by themselves, should treat themselves as prisoners of God and should act imprisoned and live a life of full devotion to the Creator, limiting their words and actions so much more than others, to the extent of treating their lives as not theirs anymore but to the Creator. Yet, take heed that the repentance given by the Lord is never to be abused for there are those who sinned promiscuously anticipating the gift of repentance to be always there. To sin now and repent later; this is foolish for the sinner clearly desire to circumvent the mercy of the Lord by abusing it.

The privilege of repentance is such an incomparable “Gift of God” for He loves humanity so much that He had sent His angels to guide the lost and wandering and redeem themselves from a life of violence and wickedness. However, this privilege is not for the abusive that would take advantage of such reward for the gift of repentance could only be availed and given by Him but once. It is so doubly malicious to carry on with one’s conduct thinking that the reward of repentance is always there anyway and could be availed of anytime. The doubly malicious would think, “I would commit more sins for anyway, there is a reward of repentance waiting for me later on.”—This mode of conduct and thought is completely unacceptable and anyone who would take advantage of this reward would have double punishment, of a punishment that is already painful beyond expectation, what the Bible described as “the vengeance of an eternal fire”, where there would be “wailing and gnashing of teeth” in a lake of fire[5].

Let us practice the concept of “The Democracy of Good Deeds and the Communism of Bad Deeds” for this would guide us and help us reach our destination in our own respective voyages to eternal life, for there is no greater objective in the life of a man than to prepare the self to the ultimate existence of enlightenment, of everlasting life of peace and harmony among brothers and sisters where there is no more suffering, sorrow and pain and where there is even be no more death. As the Bible tell us in the Revelation, “blessed are those who have overcometh their will, for they would be allowed to enter the Kingdom of God”.





Chapter 4
The Accidental Tourist

What do we mean by producing fruits from our repentance? To produce fruits from our repentance is the condition attached to the rewards of forgiveness that the angels have brought with them and this condition must be fulfilled.

To produce fruits from our repentance is an edict of replacing what we had taken, of returning what we had borrowed, and putting back into the condition in the past of a thing or persons ruined and defiled by us to the extent of the condition taking place before our particular misdeeds had caused such ruin and injury. What is broken should be unbroken. A thief should give back the money he stole, and the fornicator should live a life of total devotion to the edicts of God, evading fully even the mere thought of lust and temptation. It is also to ensure our soul by giving back more than we had taken that for instance, if you stole a car, you must give back the amount of the car you stole and more in addition. That is to ensure the acceptance of your repentance.

There is also another way of producing fruits from your repentance of countless sins throughout your lifetime, for as we say to be human in a world despoiled of strong faith, is to have committed countless sins that are so countless that we lose count on them. This mode of repayment is the cultivation of your hearts by helping others to be uplifted from a life of misfortune and misery. That is the power of the rewards of repentance. In the interest of everlasting peace and harmony among brethrens, producing fruits from your repentance could be fitting in this manner. You shall be forgiven but only if you repent immediately and produce fruits from your repentance, in order to make a complete turnaround and turn away from a life of sin and falsity, to accept God fully and follow His edicts and judgments.

This convenient mode of producing fruits from our repentance however, should not in no way be abused for even a minute abuse of these would mean eternal damnation in hellfire so that it is still a primary edict that what you steal you must return, whom you abused must be disabused, whom you killed must be recompensed and what is broken must be unbroken.

Indeed, even as we do not have to produce fruits from our repentance, the most beautiful manner of cultivating our hearts is by helping others get back on their feet, to uplift the condition of the poorest of the poor, those unfortunate brothers and sisters of ours who live in the slums and giant piles of garbage, living in ultimate squalor, endangering not only their lives but the lives of their children and their olds.

One might argue that the idea of sharing that I am strongly professing would only promote and cradle a lazy society, establishing a welfare system for slothful and laggard people, a system where people depend on others instead of their own capability to survive and rise above poverty. There is nothing farther from the truth. Let us realize that the condition of poverty is never intentional anywhere in the world, no man chose to become miserable and it is not the desire of any man to suffer poverty.

Even the richest nation in the world has a welfare system for the poor, in fact the wealthier the nations become, the stronger their welfare systems are.
Everybody wants to work and scurry for their own daily bread. Nobody desires to live the desperation of a beggar’s life. Man is by nature proud and dignified even from birth. If we think this way, it would be easier for us to accept the role of the brother’s keeper, to share whenever possible and whenever necessary.

Poverty is an existence brought about by factors that are mostly beyond the control of any man like the lack of opportunity in a master and slave society, where the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. These factors are independent of the poor man’s will. A master and slave society would always put him down, like a drowning man caught in the middle of a storm that even as he is able to swim, the giant waves would be too much for him to handle.

In a society where opportunities are limited to some sectors, where monopolies abound and cartels persist unhindered, both in business and labor, as well as in the possession of arable lands, the drowning man is an everyday reality.

Most rich people gained wealth by simply having the right opportunities at the right time. There are gains in wealth achieved by men who simply had the knowledge or initiative to recognize the key to gaining wealth and affluence. But in many societies however, not everyone has the opportunities and initiative because man and society as a whole is not made of intelligent people all, there would always be the less capable so that in a society where the only strong survive, the drowning man is indeed a pitiful reality. Now we ask ourselves as we encounter the everyday drowning man, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” “ What good does it do a man to have faith and yet he has no works?”[6]

Let me tell you a story from my childhood. When I was a child, I was living with my grandfather, compelled by circumstances the moment my first brother was born. My father then was working as a postman whose compensation was perhaps insufficient to make ends meet so my mother needed the assistance of my grandparents. Or was it maybe perhaps my mother had difficulty looking up for two sons while my father was always away. I could not surmise enough upon these particular conditions that happened so long in the past, when I still had a juvenile consciousness.

My grandfather then, Hadji Unih Bandaying, was a grower of coconut trees where through his labor and persistence, the land he tilled had carried two generations of our family. He had also been a Muslim preacher we call as imam. The cocoland was not very substantial that my grandfather oversaw it all by himself in order perhaps to save labor expenses. Every three months or so, he would go to the farm to make some work, mostly to clear unwanted bush growths and to repair some fences and then to oversee harvest time. The farm was located relatively far from the city that in fact he had to travel by sea to reach the place. I had grown so emotionally attached to my grandfather that I would insist on going with him whenever he leaves for the farm and my grandfather would take me despite his firm opposition to the idea. In one of those memorable travels--a journey where I could usually be closer to the natural grandeur of the rustic countryside, to smell the healthy soil and to witness radiant sunrises not easily found anywhere--I am particular to an incident that has been etched in my mind since it happened; an event that was not so commonplace that it somehow taught me my first lessons in the humanity of man and in the power of sharing.

This particular childhood memory however, would not bring us to the seminal beauty of the farmlands. It all happened in the ship that my grandfather and me were to embark for our trip to the island of Suba-Nipa. As usual, we went early long before the scheduled departure and we spent hours waiting for the boat to depart from its docking.

About less than an hour before the ship would leave towards its point of destination, most of the passengers were already on board. As it was usual, the passengers were busy arranging their baggage and some took their meals packed in plastic canisters and banana leaves.

I could always feel a sort of exhilaration whenever we had the island travel. There is always that shared excitement of a group of people leaving for the same destination, crossing waters on a long trip and spending the night adrift the sea together, to be one in purpose and destiny, with a certain rising in everyone’s spirit.

I gazed towards the wooden plank where people traverses in order to reach the ship from the docking, silently observing the flow of people and the kind of camaraderie they had, when I noticed a fat man wearing unruly and discordant clothes. His shirt was dirty white and over-sized even for his wide body. It was not a dirty cloth but it was sort of disconcerting, declaring that the fat man had not much choice for wardrobe. He was carrying a fading small black bag and in his hands was a “Tasbi”, the Muslim version of the rosary beads, declaring to the passers-by that he was a Muslim. And as the man drew closer to us, I was a little bit taken aback by the fact that he was a foreigner with a middle-eastern look, wearing a lengthened beard on his face, and his skin was white as any white man’s skin. He was conversing to every man as he walks past the passageways, gradually towards the direction of where I was situated. He did go closer and closer to where I was seating, until I finally realized that he was begging for money. It was indeed a surprise that a foreigner was on the streets of our country begging for coins, speaking in straight English. What really takes me out of my wits is the fact that aside from his features, he seems to be so unlike other beggars. He spoke as if he was making a contract with each man he approaches, making a business engagement, with full dignity and pride, as if he just decided not to be ashamed altogether despite the desperation of beggary. I was drawn to this fact so keenly that I observed more closely his actions and words. As he approached each man he would greet “Assalamulaykum” and went on to state, “ You know I am Amir, a Pakistani. Do you have one peso? Just one Peso, my brother.” He kept on repeating and reasserting that he needs a peso from each man. He would continue saying “You see, if you give me just one peso, it would help me buy a plane ticket back to Pakistan where my family lives. If many brothers would give me one peso each, that would help me so much.”

He was really making a contract to each and every one that he had approach, without any hint of shame in his face but pure humility, to declare to each and every one he met that the consideration for giving a peso for each and everyone of us was the altruistic feeling of enlightenment that one feels after helping a less fortunate person while his cause and consideration is to enable him to escape that particular desperation--a contract indeed with minds meeting somewhere in the middle of understanding. And because of his foreign look and the way he talks, some of the passengers got so interested in him that they inquired into his person and his other conditions in life. One passenger, an acquaintance of my grandfather who I remember to be Hadji Ahmad, inquired so much about him and conversed to him as if the Pakistani was a long lost friend. As the two men talked, many others circled around the Pakistani, curious still about the foreigner. The “accidental tourist” relayed rather deliberately (while I was listening nearby) that he was a tourist on a business trip and looking for opportunities in the selling of carpets and other goods from Pakistan. While he was billeted in one of the hotels in the city many months ago, he was robbed of almost all his belongings including his money. He was so careless he admitted to the crowd, but he did not expect so much to be put in such a quandary. Luckily he said, a friend he had known while staying here allowed him to live in their humble house in a nearby slum where poor Muslims lived, until he could find a way to solve his problem of being stranded in a foreign land. The friend of his was not affluent so he is not much of help in getting him back home to Pakistan. So he thought of a plan to help himself and this was by reaching out towards his brothers for assistance, to go to the streets to solicit for money. He said that if twenty thousand persons of Zamboanga City would give just one peso each, which is not, as he often declared, so much to asked for, it would enable him to buy his plane tickets all the way to Pakistan. Many inquired upon him why he did not ask the help of the government or the rich Muslims, maybe they were willing to help. Or why did he not seek assistance from his consulate. He just stated that walking the streets was the only way he thought of since their consulate is in faraway Manila and there was no assurance that they would give such assistance. He could have gone to Manila to pursue assistance from the Pakistani embassy but felt more secure here in Zamboanga City than in Manila because of a friend that could help him survive from day to day and that was foremost among his concerns.

The crowd felt so sympathetic to the Pakistani’s flight that every one including my grandfather fished for more money to assist the hapless Pakistani. The man was misty eyed all along. The crowd became so involved with Amir’s flight that in fact the Pakistani went with our trip upon the invitation of Hadji Ahmad.

What happened finally to the Pakistani is now beyond me, whether or not he was able to get that fare back to his homeland is not a memory to me anymore. But one thing I was sure of that day, that all of us in that particular trip felt enriched by an unusual event that had somehow opened to us a reality where men could be generous without limit, that all of us shared the experience of sharing and the enlightenment it brought forth. At the least of it all, it made me realize what a good feeling it is to share and help others to get back at their feet by the meager amount of a peso or two.

The story of the “accidental tourist” made me realized that a man might beg but at the same time retain a certain honor, an amount of dignity that could be had when one still has faith in the basic goodness of man. It was not easy for him to walk the street for money for you could see the Pakistani to be holding something heavy inside him, swallowing so much pride and dignity that he was misty eyed whenever he approached each man to solicit for a peso. A stain of embarrassment perhaps, for his helpless condition was somehow patent in how his voice would cracked at times, as if losing composure and determination to go forward like a boxer about to raise his hands in surrender after a frenetic pounding of punches. Yet, he decided to roll with the punches and held in his heart the belief that men are still good and are still brothers’ keepers.

The Pakistani was making a legitimate contract with each and every one of us and if we recognized this as legitimate, then he did not have to be teary eyed at all. For a meager some from each one of us, he could be back to his homeland and at the same time for a meager sum, we could be enriched by our humanity in assisting others whose plight has turned from bad to worst, conditions brought about mostly by causes not completely of their own liking. For certain, Amir had not intended himself to be robbed in our country. And definitely, he did not desire to walk the streets begging for money.

There is a feeling of enlightenment whenever we share genuinely. That feeling is unexplainable in concrete terms except that it is the desire of God, the Great Divine, and divinity is at the same time unexplainable in concrete terms. This is the enlightenment we gain in engaging in such form of “contract”, an enlightenment to the fact that indeed we could still be our brother’s keeper.

In the present world we live in, there are many of those who desire to make the legitimate contract of “the accidental tourist”. To be poor was never the intendment of the poor for poverty is not a condition desirable. The beggar with limbs injured makes a contract to us every day. “Look at me,” they say, “I was unfortunate to lose my limbs that I am incapable of work anymore but with your meager amount you could help me extend my sojourn here on Earth as you also had the privileged of sojourning in this beautiful world full of water and air and sunrise and misty mornings, of radiant trees and blossoming flowers, a world so full of colors and vibrancy.”

With the meager amount, you could make a man’s life much more sufferable and on the other hand such form of giving will further enrich your spiritual life as Jesus Christ had imparted in his teachings and as Prophet Mohammad (Peace Be Upon Him) had commanded and as Moses had declared. “Love thy neighbors” Moses declared. The produce of our repentance may also appear in other forms such as assisting a dying man on the ground, a poor cousin seeking harbor after a long journey, a desperate neighbor soliciting loan for a crying infant, a friend in dire straits, a hungry child on the streets.

It should be a gain of principled men to have humanity where every one is brothers and sisters all, regardless of gender and creed and race and nationality. Conflict is of no benefit to anyone and violence is a stain to peace and harmony. We should carry our brothers and sisters like we carry our own children.

For certain, this is not an edict to let your persons be abused by those who misrepresent their incapacities, for even our own children we castigate when they overdo the limit of our patience and harbor. It is in our hearts that we are able to know when to give a helping hand or when to shy away from those who take advantage of generosities.

If we ever doubt our propensity for sharing, we should always remember Amir, the Pakistani, the accidental tourist who makes a contract to us in order to uplift himself from an unfortunate situation not of his liking and intendment.

But you may ask: “Is it an obligation for us to share our blessings? If that is the case, what is the limit then?” This must be the question of any rich man. “In my hurried life as a big banker or as an investment broker, or in my occupation as president of a multinational company, I simply have no time for the works of a Good Samaritan, for I have to work and feed my family and look out for my self--this is the life I live in.” and this must be the thought of any rich man.

To think, how does helping others become an obligation when we have to live our own lives first and foremost. To this I say, sharing is never in the form of an obligation, as we understand the word “obligation” today, for it is blind faith to have a sack of money and go to the streets to look for beggars and poor people just in order to distribute such money--while there is no genuine intention to share. Are we buying faith?

Generosity could not be faked and sharing should always be genuine. If it is genuine, there would be no question as to how much give or when to offer a helping hand.

Sharing is a consequence of our humanity, of us being human beings. When we reach the point that we already fail to feel sympathy for the misfortunes of others, then we must have reached a point where some parts of our hearts have been closed through numbing indifference of the suffering around us, where we could care no more in a world of dog-eat-dog existence, a fast and furious way of life where only the strong survives and the weak withers. Where being strong is sometimes to have the strength to kiss the foot of other men in order to gain richness.

Charity is never an obligation but a consequence of our humanity.

For if there are two man walking an isolated street of the city, one is a rich man who is busy with his work and occupation, in order to generate more wealth for himself or in order to further his ambition of reaching a higher position; and then there was the other man who is merely a laborer with merely enough wealth for his subsistence. And in that isolated street, an old man with a wooden cane lie on the ground, half-conscious and fallen from tiredness and hunger, clearly unable to stand up as general weakness had encroached upon his body. The rich man would pass along the street and come upon the sight of the fallen man. He would take immediate cognizance of course of the tragedy of the fallen man but he has a meeting to attend and time is of the essence for him. He could not pass this business deal. He would walk ahead and disregard the appeal of the fallen man.

Then the laborer would walk along the same area of the streets and come upon the sight of the fallen man and surely he would recognize the pain of the fallen man, for he have been hungry and tired before. Seeing this tragedy, he would enquire if the man is still breathing, and if he is still, he would fish for some coins for the man’s sustenance, or he would even buy the bread himself from a nearby bakery, and bring some water.

In the instance above related, who is the man of great faith? Who is more human and has more humanity? To be sure the laborer had encountered no law or ordinance that makes it an “obligation” to assist a fallen man. The rich man would not have committed any illegal act by disregarding the appeal of a hungry man. But is providing a helping hand an obligation?

The man of great faith would not even have to ponder upon the obligation of a helping hand for it comes to him naturally. The man of lesser faith also has no pondering upon the obligation of a helping hand because sharing is in fact not an issue to him anymore for he even does not reach the point where he would ponder upon the nature of this act.

This only we must realize, God is like a father who has many children. If some of his children were more benefited and became wealthy while others languish in misfortune, to be sure he would appeal upon his wealthier children to assist their suffering brothers and sisters, for the suffering of the children is also the suffering of the father.

And all the fruits of this earth were meant for everyone to share, so that everyone will eat. How come there are many still that have no food on their table?

If it comes to you that in your own self, there is a doubt as to the genuineness of your faith--I shall point you to the right way, in order that you would be cleansed by the discomfort of this uncertainty; and this “right way” is by being men for others. There is nothing more that would endear you to the Lord God than by being a Good Samaritan.

If it comes to you to doubt yourself if you ever shall enter the Kingdom of God or not--I shall show you the way. Live your lives as if to live is living not only for yourselves, but also living lives for others. And surely you will not be lost. For certain, there must be some other ways, but this is the clearest path to the destination that the Lord had promised us.

Even when many of us are the most steadfast of a hunter, not all of us could be good hunters. The children, the women and the old are not good hunters.

Let us all hunt in packs like many ancient people do. If a people would hunt as a pack, it is a people who shall have no hungry brother left out in the cold. A people who hunt in packs looks out more for the weakest member--the children, the women and the old--those who could not join the able men on their hunting trips.

But when we became individualistic by nature that many would be left out in the cold, especially in a dog-eat-dog existence we have today.

“What does faith do to you if many lie naked in the streets.”[7]


Chapter 5
An Old Man In A Jeepney

We must heal the world by reawakening from the seemingly discordant society in which we live in today; a society where violence reign and evil pervades. Where men are putting others down more often than the sun rises and sets in, where stealing becomes the norm rather than the exception, and where the temptation of the flesh becomes a religion deified and glorified by many who become slaves to the dictates of lust.

Nowadays, it is never a surprise anymore to find men preaching morality and uprightness in the eyes of many and yet when they vanish from public view, they are the very evil that they preach against, that in their more private worlds, they would steal without restraint or fornicate incessantly.

At a glance, nothing seems to be wrong with our world today. It is still revolving and despite the violence in some parts of the world, people go about their task as expected. But when we examine it closer, the world we live in today is so stained with the evil that men do--evils that they do in their everyday deeds. Men fight one another as easily even upon very insignificant reasons, to have prejudice and contempt mostly for reason of differences in race and creed. Many steal routinely merely by reason of vanity and pride. We see so much of our brothers suffering in helpless condition and many would not even lift a finger to provide assistance. The Good Samaritan in us had vanished. Our popular culture nowadays promotes violence and irresponsible sex and rebellion in the youth, as we see it all too often in movies and literatures and television--sex, drugs and violence as a popular phrase states.

In our daily dealings--as we read through the papers and listen to the news broadcast--we encounter the government official who does not move without the bribe money, the policeman who stops the jeepney drivers in order to extort money, the bank accountant who ran away with embezzled money, the street thug who pickpockets in sidewalks, the politicians with their unexplained wealth, the vendor of pornographic materials, the pimps in night streets, and the killers for hire. Anywhere in the world, evil had seemed to have seep in into the deep recesses of our minds and hearts that somehow we accept many of them as mere ordinary occurrences.

This must not be the case. If in fact humanity has the greatest faith in the Creator, following so adeptly His teachings and judgments, the occurrence of evil in our world would not have been as prevalent. At least not in the scale or extent that they are happening now. This is the contradiction of our humanity, the incongruity of the world we live in. Churches and Mosques abound. New religion or sect sprouts here, there and everywhere that for every mile you travel there is always a chapel or a mosque somewhere. Yet, evil still pervades nowadays. Every move we make, we see a cross or a crescent and yet we often forget the edicts of God. This is an era of the strongest faith and yet at the same time it is an era of false faith. Christianity had never been as widespread. Islam gains more and more converts to its fold. And yet, the world is full of men living lives for themselves merely; of men who commit acts so wrongly in order to further their own interest.

In relation to the contradiction of faith today, let me tell you a story.

When I was in college many years ago, I had been active in the school publication that I often go home a little bit late in the evening to complete works in the intricate production of a magazine issue. In one of those nights that I stayed late in school, I decided to proceed home earlier than planned when my stomach started to grumble from starvation. I usually stayed further but that particular night, but I ran out of pocket money to buy me some snacks. So I had to rush home. With merely coins in my pocket, I took a passenger jeepney instead of the tricycle. As usual, I had to wait for the jeepney to be full of passengers before it moves to depart from the station and I could feel my starvation getting more and more urgent as each minute pass, and the wait became an eternity. I could almost hear my stomach grumbling. The trembling movement of the jeepney (as it prepared its engine to depart) gave my tired body and empty stomach a sort of therapeutic message that somehow my discomfort was lessened. Still, the hunger was ever present and as the minutes grew on, my stomach kept complaining that in fact the grumbling of my stomach had become audible already that I had become unusually mindful of the man sitting beside me.

My tiredness drew my head into a stoop and while I was drooping, I saw a pair of slippers worn by a man sitting just in front of me. The pair of slippers caught my attention and interest for it was unlike any other pair of slippers. Each slipper was of different color and of different sizes. My thought started to process the sight of the unpaired slippers. Maybe I was already hallucinating due to my hunger and tiredness as I momentarily mistrusted my sense of sight. No one wears unpaired slippers in a public place. It was not good to look at and embarrassing to say the least. It was somehow funny I thought.

Who would ever wear unpaired slippers in a public place? Nobody. Nobody except a beggar or a mentally incapacitated person would wear such incongruence in his or her body. So I investigated further to seek explanation as to the incidence of an unpaired slippers. I looked upward slowly to gain cognizance of the man who wore the unpaired slippers. It was a man indeed, an old man at that. He was too old that in fact I did not mind so much the tattered clothes he wore on his body. But there was one contradiction in my mind. Would a beggar ride a jeepney? If there was one, I had not expected that to happen. I have seen beggars before and I know their general actuations. They usually walk with walking canes in one hand and a rusting can on the other. They usually have with them a decrepit pouch bags full of clunking coins of different denomination. They would walk the streets as if they have no destination for it was never easy to imagine a sort of destination for men so wanting in possessions. Do they have their own homes? Do they have family relations?

A beggar riding a jeepney or any public transport is a beggar that I have not met before. Could he be a beggar, after all? Maybe and maybe not; or maybe he was an insane man. But where would he go? An insane man would have lack destination also; in fact, the more that they should have lacked destination. They would have also lacked the motive to ride a jeepney.

As I looked gradually upward, my sight witnessed the face of an old man with sadness on its eyes or more particularly the face of a man with hunger written in capital letters. My mind was a little bit disturbed and began wandering into thoughts that needed in-depth analysis and deeper judgment. There was in fact a sort of awakening for me when I realized that one could actually tell how hungry a man is by just looking at his eyes. Maybe the traces of wrinkles beneath the eyes could signal the restlessness brought forth by an empty stomach. Or perhaps the clouds in the pupils would tell the tale of a consuming starvation. Or maybe a tint of held-back tears in the eye could also tell you that or a drooping face. I was not so certain now how suddenly a man’s deep hunger exploded in my mind and took a grasp of my time and interest. What was my business after all about somebody else’s hunger?

The old man in unpaired slippers and tattered clothes was very hungry indeed. If I was tired and hungry at that time, I was in fact luckier. At least I have two good pairs of shoes on. At least somehow, a meal is waiting for me on the table the minute I arrive home.

But for that old man in a jeepney, I could not tell for certain if a meal would be able to heal his hunger for that night. Consequently, I felt so much pity for the old man that my stomach refrained from grumbling. It must have been the feeling of relief that one would feel whenever one suddenly realizes that someone was more unfortunate, at least.

Despite of it all, there was some kind of disturbance in my mind. A disturbance not anymore brought about by the weakness of my body, but the concern I felt for the old man--the sight of a hungry man in unpaired slippers. How often do we see some old man with unpaired slippers and a drooping hungry face? Are they facts of life we accept or do we repel them and recognize them as an abnormality of society? What happened to the words and messages of the priests, of the preachers, and of the imams? How could we ever accept the reality of our shielded life if some of us seem to have no destination and no assured food on the table? But then, am I my brother’s keeper? Would I take this man with me and share my meal or would I go against my instinct and turn away?

For one reason or another, I just turned away from the old man. I felt a certain embarrassment in walking side by side with an old man in tattered clothes and the more if I have to clutch him home to share my meal. It is the sort of discomfort we feel every time we pass a beggar in the street. We would like to fish for a coin or two and pass it to the beggar’s hand but somehow we are self-conscious of such act that we just go forward without giving the alms, as if giving alms is a wrong thing to do.

I was a lesser man then and perhaps even now. I had some money to spare so I just paid a fare for two and pointed out to the jeepney driver that the old man would not have to pay his fare anymore and proceeded home to the meal waiting for me. I could share some coins for the old man I thought, for after all it was Christmas season. In fact, as I remember it quite well, it was Christmas Eve when I witnessed the starvation of the old man in unpaired slippers, a time where many would have fine and abundant food on their table and the air would be full of the sound of bells ringing, lights flicking, carols abound, Christmas trees decorated, parties celebrated and other merriment happening. My instinct would have led me to bring the old man home to share a meal, but the lesser man in me prevailed.

Somehow, in times like that, to feel sympathy for another man’s plight of desperation is already enough to exorcise ourselves of the contradiction of man’s faith today, when it seems that there is nothing more to give but sympathy and consolation. “What good does it do a man to have faith and yet has no works?”[8]

The old man in a jeepney had opened something in me that was hidden somewhere inside the recesses of my person. Of how I complain so much about the many frustrations in my life when I just saw a hungry man whose destination is of no certainty? Would he have any family relations to go? If so, why would they allow this relative to befool his person by wearing tattered clothes and unpaired slippers in public?

This is the world we live in today; a world full of contradiction. Where many preach sharing and goodness and the overwhelming mercy of God, to celebrate so grandly their faith and yet their faith is of no meaning to others but merely to themselves. No one is his brother’s keeper anymore. Why would I waste my wealth on that old man? Am I Abel? Or am I Cain? Am I my brother’s keeper? And usually we even castigate them. Why don’t he work just as I do? But at the same time fail to ask questions like: “Have the society been fair to him as it was to me?” “ Is he an insane man or a man without limbs, or a man abused?”

Have we always looked away from the other side of the coin?

Are we all our brothers’ keeper?

Does faith alone can save me?

Let us ask the Creator these questions one by one and look for the answer in our hearts.





Chapter 6
Of Virtues and Vices

Of vices and virtues of men, who am I to enquire upon and much less to elucidate upon? Such aspect of humanity is they say the territory of wise men and sages. Am I a prophet? Am I a messenger? To these I assert no answer for time is the judge of the witnesses of the Creator. But let us say that as a man also looking for answer, allow me to put my two-cent worth of an idea.

Man but an imperfect creation of God. This imperfection seems to have been implanted to us as part and parcel of our nature for as we have discussed earlier, no man is perfect. But to this I say, the imperfection of man is never enough ground to accept that man is a natural sinner. We err at times but to sin must not be one of our intention or purpose. To err is human but to sin is evil.

We are sinners not because we intend to sin but we erred. For every whole or being, there must be always a margin for error. For every creation, there is always a chance for imperfection.

It is error that precedes every man sin that is acceptable, that is to act without evil intent; that in the bottom line, there is in fact no instance of sin but that of a mistake. It is no sin to have done something wrongly without intending to cause harm or without knowing the consequence. There would be error and sin is unlikely in such instance. “It is not to defile a man to eat with an unwashed hand, but what defiles a man is the evil that comes from their hearts.”[9] It is the intent that counts and not the outward actions of men. There are those for example who prays each day and yet in their homes, they are fornicators. On the other hand, there are those who are less pious in the eyes of men but in their secret lives, they are great philanthropists.

When sin precedes error (to commit error upon the premise of intent to sin), pure evil permeates. To take something without knowing fully well that it does not belong to us is an error. But to take something fully knowing that it is not ours is sin at its purest form and never an error and never an excuse for being merely human.

It is not merely an error anymore for a man to cause harm and injury upon others with malice in its mind for is never justified except in defense of person, country or of faith.

The occurrences of evil are never justified by our admittance that man is imperfect by nature. Our imperfection merely allows us to err but never to sin. Therefore, it is foolishness to justify our misdeeds by invoking to the Lord that we are sinners because we are only human. That would be undermining the very complex and reliable human processes of determining what is right and what is wrong—the workings of the mind and heart.

Of vanity this I say: Vanity is one of the test of our humanity. Vanity is already present in each and every one of us the moment we came out of our mother’s womb and is but part of human nature. We comb our hair and that is vanity. We iron our clothes and that is vanity. It is vanity that leads us to be better persons, to be more presentable to others so that others may relate to us with ease and not to maintain a close door to every man’s face.

Vanity is virtue therefore.

But vanity had oftentimes become a vice to many of us nowadays. It is vanity that leads us to steal so that we could have a better bungalow than our neighbors. So that we could wear designer clothes just as others do for without the Italian leather shoes, we feel nothing in front of our friends. This is destructive vanity, when it is vanity that takes control of our will and not us taking control over it. As a virtue, vanity propels us to go forward and work harder and strive further, to be more progressive in mentality so that we could be like others who had fully earned things without committing any mischief, and achieving upon pure ability.

If we used our vanity properly, it could be the wind beneath our wings, allowing us to scale higher grounds and thereon makes us better persons; driving us to exhaust the possibilities of our potentials. But when vanity becomes a vice (especially when envy complicates matters), men are often led to commit malice to attain things they do not deserve. For example, if I see a colleague who had become so successful as a salesman. For certain I would admire him and relish at the things he have. In my mind, maybe I could also be a salesman and earn as much as he do. But if I lost my spiritual balance, I would certainly feel so much envy at his very enviable position. And that envy upon the vanity of others and upon my own destructive vanity would lead me to do things otherwise unacceptable to me that at worst I would already steal so that I could attain his level of fortune. I would more or less put him down in other men’s eyes so that he is not that as enviable anymore.

Vanity as a vice brings forth evil in the scale of small and great. It had oftentimes led many of us to gossip against our neighbors and in some instances it had led many to kill in the thousands. Vanity led countless nations and people to instigate war among nations great and small, to prove who is the better nation or the nobler race. It had led to the rise of many empires and the destruction of the same and along the way, the blood of thousands of men, women and children poured upon the tarmac of battlefields upon the cause of vanity.

And so is it the same with envy. Envy is also a virtue but at most times it is a vice.

Envy is a nature of man that could not be set aside. It is already in us at the time of birth. If we use envy as a virtue, it is a wind to our will to go forward and strive in life so that we would have things others have As a vice, it would lead one to destroy the person of another so that he or she may not have that too enviable position anymore.

Envy is a feeling of want and lack of possession, material or otherwise. It is the nature of man to feel so lacking and wanting the moment he witnesses the greater fortunes of others--in abundance of wealth and comfort. The sight of a friend driving a brand new car would elicit the immediate feeling of envy. But it would foretell the kind of man you are on how such envy affects your person. In some, it would be good envy for they would feel the need to scurry for more and to work harder for if a friend could attain such possession, I could also. In others, it would lead to gossiping and the doing of misdeeds to attain such fortune in the most convenient manner. Like vanity, envy could lead me to do evil things in order to catch up with the rich neighbors, to have that state-of-the-art cell phone or to have that fancy car. Like vanity, envy had led also to many great wars that kings and noblemen before us had waged and fought, to the woe of their subjects and people trampled to the ground, bloodied and sacrificed for the reason of envy.

And so is the feeling of anger. Anger is but a nature of man that is as clear as the sun rising from the horizon. Anger is a nature that is also undeniable in each and every one of us. In fact, it is more undeniable as a nature of man than vanity and envy.

To be angry is not to sin per se and not altogether to cause harm or malice against others. In its barest form, the feeling of anger is a defense mechanism of our persons, to enable us to thwart and purge things and condition that are injurious or unacceptable to us. To have anger is to warn others that my own self is a universe of its own, a universe which I protect and shield from the menace of others. My body is my temple and nobody shall encumber or pierce it against my legitimate will and desires. My body is a kingdom by its own, a whole cosmos which I could at least have control of. When my enemies stage a siege against this kingdom, I have no choice but to defend it and lead it away from any harm’s way. In so long as my path is in the way of righteousness, my anger is my shield and when everything fails, it also becomes my sword.

In connection with the feeling of anger, the feeling of hate is at the same time both beneficial and deleterious to us. To hate is not to sin at all for to hate is to be human. But many times we hate for baseless causes or reasons, and that is the kind of hate that leads us to sin. Our hate and anger is never justified if we hate others just because of their faces or the color of their skin.

To be human is to feel the feeling of hate for we are indeed but a creature of emotion, an emotion that is in perpetual motion. We were not created as robots moving upon a set of mechanism.

To know the feeling of love fully is to know the feeling of hate fully. To see light is to come from a point of darkness. To rise above the level is always to start from a lower ground.

Like anger, hate provides us a mechanism in which to thwart all things unacceptable to us. It is a wall that no one should pierce by his own mischief. For certain, when evil approaches us, we have feel hate in order to warn others from not pursuing such evil, as we turn them away and repel them immediately. When our concept of good and evil is healthy and proper, our hate becomes the most formidable shield against the menace of evil that we could easily maintain the level of goodliness that is acceptable to the Creator above. That another man is capable of hate is a fact we should always assume as we carry on with our relations with others, so that we must always ponder upon our every actions and deeds, not to be hasty in words and shall by no means abuse the persons of others. It is the existence and capacity for hate that no man should treat others without pondering upon each action and deed. A man has hate that is why another man should always take enough caution in relation with him. This may be summed up with the Confucian edict that declares, “Do not do unto others what you do not want others to do unto you”.

Upon the feeling of hate still, while this a part of human nature, existing even at the time of birth, such sentiment is often times manifested today through prejudice against another man’s race or creed, to discriminate merely by reason of race, to explode the fragility of the differences in man. I am white and you are black. I am a Catholic while you are a Muslim. I am English and you are Irish.

The conflict of the white man against the black man in the days of old, is not as we thought diminished by the many changes in our modern society. Of course, there is no more slavery and no more White South Africa, but still the same issues rage amongst that many conflicts still hounds our world today. The civil war between the North and South states in the Americas may be just a part history now but the same element of prejudice exist amidst the recent ethnic wars in the Balkan Regions, in the seeming annihilation of the Kurds in Iraq, the ferocious Middle East conflict between Arabs and the Jews, the segregation of Chinese descents in parts of Southeast Asia, in the war that tears Southern Philippines for decades now, the Islamic movement in Indonesia, and the Irish revolt against the Queen of England.

Through burning crosses and ethnic cleansing, “hate” continue to permeate in our world today, to pursue volatility in the differences of men instead of allowing these differences to unite men. Even in our everyday surroundings, hate and prejudices abound upon causes entirely self-indulgent. There are the rich who would not touch any poor man’s hands. There are the bourgeoisie looking down on the masses. There are the greedy capitalists abusing the fruits of another man’s labor. There are the huge landowners who give pittance to the hands that cultivate their land. There are the college frat men who sneer at others just because they are nerds. There are the Muslims who hate Christians and Christians who hate Muslims just because of difference of religion or culture. It is groundless hate that results into conflicts, conflicts that are small and great.

The sentiment of hate is a defense mechanism that we should employ against the abuse and mischief of others but never to perjure others. Hate is often dangerous and volatile that if you multiply the hate of a single individual into the number of the people in a population, it becomes disturbing to the point of harming the world order. The Holocaust happened because the hate and prejudiced of a few men were multiplied into many that such massive lose of lives resulted. When we use the feeling of hate improperly, it is disastrous and destructive.

Then there is Pride. Pride is also a nature of man that is already obtaining at the time of birth. And what is to be human if being human is not to have pride. Man is proud by nature and it is not wrong to feel pride. Pride is also a wind beneath our wings, to propel ourselves to become better persons. I have pride so I have to look out upon my own devices and not depend upon other’s beneficence. I would strive upon myself to do things that I that is expected of me and along the way I would realize that I could do things that I thought not possible before. It is the feeling of pride that harnesses our potentials so that we may feel proud in the eyes of others. To be proud is to feel good. There is no denying a man’s prerogative to feel proud for to be human is also to feel proud. A man needs to feel proud in order to live meaningfully. I also have what you have. I am at the same level with you. I am with you. I am one with you. And therefore embrace me as I embrace you.

Pride frees us up from the grasp of mediocrity and shoves us to find our true worth by leading us to exhaust every potentiality of our capabilities, and thereon allow us to live a full life without regrets. Pride makes us enjoy the true meaning of life, to be a force by our own selves and a force to others, in order to affect the lives of many.

The author who is proud of his writing continues to entertain many through the tales he tell. The painter so proud of his genius continues to delight the sight of others. The singer so proud of her swooning voice endears herself to others by her soulful meanderings of love and devotion.

But pride of an individual is at many times false.

False pride would certainly lead us to a life of misdeeds, leading us to commit transgressions that are otherwise unacceptable to us. In order to be proud in the eyes of others, many would steal in order to gain approbation.

It is also false pride to feel more worthy than others on the basis merely of race and creed. I may be a doctor but without the fishermen in the sea, there would be no fish on my table. It is not wealth that makes us prouder than others, but the works we do for others and the society as a whole. What good does it do to be proud in the eyes of man and yet lose the graces of the Creator above?

Pride as a human nature propels us to become better persons, a wind beneath our wings. But false Pride kills and destroys not only others but also our own persons, leading us to steal and kill and to manipulate others so we could be proud in the eyes of other men, a kind of manufactured and artificial pride and not a pride well-deserved.


Upon the sentiment of greed, it is also a virtue and a vice.

Greed is a vice or a misdeed, as we know it today. We despise Mr. Scrooge for his selfishness and for being such a killjoy. We hate the conceptual fat and greedy businessman, full of fatty wealth and profits. We abhor the child friend who does not let us play with his toys.

And yet, if we examine ourselves, the feeling of greed is somewhat instinctive to all of us. We do not usually part with our things as easily. We ponder at length before we give them away. Even the most venerable philanthropist would feel this way because greed is a nature of man that we could not dispel.

Upon the other hand however, the feeling of greed allows us to survive, coming from a point where human has great instincts for survival and self-preservation. It is a virtue to be selfish sometimes. It is a mechanism instituted in our nature as a method of survival. The cave men protected their territories from the infiltrations of strangers in order that they may have the grounds from which to hunt and harvest their food without limitation and therefore protect them from the pangs of hunger and the consequential banishment of their tribe. They would protect these hunting grounds to the hilt, with blood if need be. These were also apparent in the natives of lands like the former America and the old Philippines where blood stained the grounds in defense of territory, in protection of lands to which they live and allowed to live with unbounded and unguarded mobility. To feel greedy is not at all a vice or sin if it is towards self-preservation. You must not take the food out of our table in order for us to live. You must not take away my work through your mischief and motive for self-aggrandizement for you would take away my daily bread.

Nowadays however, greed propels the motives of men who merely look out for their own interest. There are the wealthy capitalists and huge landowners who take advantage upon the fruits of labor of their workers. You may have a thousand acres of land but without the workers to help you create wealth from such land, it is useless to you. You may have discovered the formula for a soothing liquor, but without the hands of the labor that works in your factory, in order to produce your discovery in mass number, there would be no great wealth or benefit for you. You could implore the help of all your family relations, of all your friends and neighbors and yet you would not get so rich even if you have a thousand acres of land.

The need to fill our greed have become insatiable that many today have so much wealth and yet they become the more greedy and continue to pile up wealth which they could not bring to the grave, a wealth so vast that even their great-grandchildren would not be able to expend it. As the biblical verses remind us all, what good does it have for a man to have faith and yet do not have works?

What is faith to a man when there are many sleeping in the coldest part of the streets with barely a garment covering their shivering bodies, where some are living in ultimate squalor of the slums and dying in piles of garbage? Can faith alone save him and gain the graces of the Creator? What good does it do a man to have pleasures here on Earth if he shall lose the graces of the Lord? For certain, God would not allow greedy and selfish people into the Kingdom of God. For God is like a father who has many children, some children became wealthy and there are some who languish in poverty. As a father, you feel sorrowed to watch some of your children suffering that you call upon your other more fortunate children to give a helping hand to the less fortunate ones, for the suffering of my children is also the suffering of the father.

All in all, it is the acceptance of the fact of the very imperfection of man that should impel us towards “perfection”, to be closer to the ideal self, the righteous self. It is not to be perfect that God wanted us to become, but it is merely to be righteous for in life there are many temptations and traps, and yet the righteous man is fortified by his strong faith in the Creator.

It is undeniable that to be human is to feel anger, hate, greed, and pride. We are also vain by nature. But to be human is not to feel improper anger or hate or to be so greedy that you take advantage upon the labor of others or to be so proud that you encroach upon the persons and possessions of others to assert your false pride--building empires of your own so that you may alone take the richness of lands not of your own roots.

Today, men monopolize businesses so that they may have all the wealth and opportunities merely for their own. Men put down others so that they alone could be employed or be promoted. Landowners fail to share properly the fruits of the land so that they alone become benefited. What does it do to you to have faith and yet others lay naked in the streets? Does faith alone enough to save you and gain the rewards of the Creator?[10]

You could feel proud with humble clothes on your skin. You could be vain if you are merely a farmer or a fisherman that you do not have to steal or kill to further your need for vanity and pride. Vincent Van Gogh died so poor that he died with a messy look on his person and yet no painter could be more proud than himself. Leo Tolstoy defied his wealthy heritage and decided a life of humility and yet no writer is more influential than him.

Life in this material world is but a temporary sojourn or foray for all of us that ultimately, we should realize that the real existence of man does not cease with the decay of the flesh. Moments after death takes the breath away from our mortal bodies, our soul would merely slide into another world, to face judgment as to what world you have prepared yourself to be with—either in the blissfulness of the Kingdom of God or in the suffering of an Eternal Fire.

Life is too short many say and none could be truer than this. What does it do to you to gain so many pleasures in this temporary world, even to the extent of committing misdeeds, when after your foray in this world, you gain everlasting sorrow and suffering anyway? Why fret upon the suffering brought about by poverty and a life of want and need when after all, after this sojourn on earth, you would gain everlasting life of peace and harmony in the Kingdom of God that the Creator had prepared for us.

To be human is to be imperfect but to be imperfect is not a reason for us to sin, but merely to err.


Chapter 7
The Worth of My Coins

I was walking the streets of Manila one early morning heading towards school when I chanced upon a sight that I thought only existed in movies and in the news broadcast that we see on television. In a parked utility vehicle were two children of about two or three years old, perhaps brothers, playing giddily after waking up, as children always do when they wake up together with their siblings from the night sleep. I had questions again in my mind s