Reduced to reflection

The planning and architecture course has tuned my mind into a mantra of “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” anytime anyone of the three words appear. That is how powerful our minds are in abiding by what we have been taught. Or regurgitating what we have learnt before.

Now that I have stepped aside from spending hours conceptualising a physical environment to spending hours contemplating a metaphysical environment, this word rings a different tune. The most important reduction that brought me to where and how I am today is the concept of how the world is basically merely a mirror of our inner world. What is inside shows up to us in the form of everything else outside. This may sound rather cliched because all the gurus and sages say that, but there is really a strong truth to it as we experience life from that point of view.

Just yesterday I was in a teleconference, and as I listened to the conversations (including my own voice, I do speak now.. heh), I start to see the pattern of how a person’s judgement or conclusion (however preliminary) really shows what the person is inside. When a person complains non-stop about a certain aspect of this/that person/culture, there is normally something that he/she is very judgemental against himself/herself for. I also saw how words coming out from an emotional place can really lose control. It is fortunate that I get to see this as a third party, and catch it enough before it happens to myself. I was angry too, but being able to step out of this place of anger (as an emotion) allowed me to see from a position of compassion (I still believe people do certain things only because of the circumstances they are caught in, plus the level of consciousness they are at), and henceforth, I was able to just step out of the density and view from a place of light. It is really really useful, and I highly recommend that we all take the higher ground whenever we can. It is not a matter of self-righteousness, or righteousness, or being a “better person”, all it does is to put us in a more centred position of seeing what is the best for yourself/myself/everybodyelse. The outcome may be sucky but at least we will derive at something not from a place of “oops, I did it again”.

This is a super long rant which I have not indulged in for a long long time. 😀

Reducing judgement has proven to be quite a useful life hack for me thus far. There’s a chicken-and-egg cycle here – reducing judgement of others looping in a cycle with reducing judgement of ourselves. Apply this concept on the above example, and tada~ yes it works. When we are less judge-y, we learn a lot more about a bigger world out there (or inside).

At the full moon meditation last night, we were supposed to visualise a box. I got a flower. Dang. I was like, “hey hey, you’re supposed to be a box”. The flower got clearer and I saw a tulip. Ow. Talk about judgey, I started looking at it and wondering, “errrmmm, why not a lotus?” and “hmm. how about a rose?” But no, it remained firmly a crisp bright red tulip with bright yellow edges. We had to open the box and see what it holds inside, so I pried open the tulip without much effort and wow-whee, it’s bright golden powder of pollen (okay, I added the pollen myself, it was just bright golden powder). We were instructed to ask for guidance from that gift, and the word that appeared for me was “nectar”. Hmmm. “Saccharine sweetness” was further elaboration when I paused with question marks. Well, I am definitely feeling the sweetness of bliss right now just from the images of last night’s meditation. Hah, it would have gone the other way had I been grumpy about, “I didn’t even see a box!”

Hope this makes a good example to why we have to take life as it comes instead of how we think we are “supposed to” see things.

Anyhow, I am still pondering the significance of the tulip. Maybe Netherlands is calling. Shrugs, it is not the first time already. Last year, I saw my divine timing of being in a court/congress with a (my?) baby in hand as I raised and spoke up for the rights of dunno-what. I had long forgotten about it (prophesies always feel like plain iffy images until they really happen in real life), maybe Universe is sending me reminders. The closest I got  from reality was a day in Amsterdam half-weeded from second hand smoke with dad after venturing to see Van Gogh’s work and realising that Starry, Starry Night is in New York (!!!!! didn’t do enough homework). Shrugs, I don’t know. The last time any Dutch thought crossed my mind was almost a decade ago when I was exploring options of pursuing humanitarian aid and crisis response. That was sooooooo long ago, I almost forgot too. Why the heck did all these come back up to the surface last night?

Full moon craziness. Rant rant rant. Pardon my grumblings. Hoping this grouching can lead to some form of clarity, but apparently not. Ah well. Tsk. Sorry to take you this far with no conclusion of any kind. 😮