Sunday, January 31, 2010

The Struggle to Learn and to Believe

It has been more than a month since I last posted here, the time in between being I was posting in my Spanish blog. I was hoping I could get to improve my Spanish by leaps and bounds, but it appears that learning a language isn't so. One has to really adjust with one's own abilities, and how one learns something new.

I have to come to this realization that there are really things that would enable you to speak your mind better. I have hoped that speaking another language would help me learn a new way of thinking about myself and the world. I realized I was wrong in thinking that I could accelerate the process. Although new knowledge would add up upon itself, there would always be things that would serve as the foundation of this. Writing in English would be one of them. After all, I have grown to write in English, and it is in this language that I express my intellectual self the best.

But then, English is the language of the mind, Spanish the language of the soul. I have been reading poems in Spanish, and truth be told, Spanish for me is still a better medium for expressing deeper thoughts. I am still in the process of learning it, because I believe Spanish would enable me to write about so much more, and go down into the soul so much deeper. I still think English can only do so much. I don't know if it is in the sounds of English, or the musicality of Spanish that each language derives their respective distinctive traits. But my soul yearns for a deeper manner of self-expression.

Right now I will have to settle with getting understood, because, thanks to those Americans who erased our Hispanic culture, most of my readers here in the Philippines won't get to understand the depth that I may achieve with Spanish when I do learn to write with it well. Depth, in this sense, would not have a point.

Let me get on with another important matter of meditation for me.

There are things that I am trying to work through within my mind right now, and one of them seems to cross through my beliefs already. I have kept this blog as a repository of thoughts which I considered to be part of a religious calling, both as hopefully, a source of inspiration for others, and, as a way for me to remind myself of what I was and what I may be become. However, there have been things I am trying to sort through.

Slowly, I feel that such religious fervor has been distancing itself from my subconscious for quite a number of weeks now. There have been times that I even stopped singing to Mass songs while in church, and just whispering the responses. I don't know if this is related to what I would call a struggle to better understand my faith and what it impulses me to do. One of my friends, to which I confided about my religious feelings before, had been asking me about God's love and forgiveness. He was, and I think he still is, feeling something like I am feeling right now. I don't know if this would give me assurance that at last I know how exactly how he feels, because it has brought me both good and bad things in my life.

Good, because I was brought up not doing things for the sake that these may be sin, or these may run counter to what my faith has taught me. Studying medicine, however, and how some topics within the field of bioethics taught me about how an action would be considered immoral by how it affects others and how it affects the self. I don't know, but I figure this may have tempted me to discover things for myself, and not act prudishly and avoid these altogether. This may wreak havoc on me, but I am still praying that God act as a safety belt in this spiritual rappel that I am doing. There exists within men an urge to experience adventure. I guess this may be what's happening.

Good, also, because, well, I don't know whether this sense of religiosity (I would dare say over-religiosity) has distanced me from common sense, or of my self-confidence, or of being listened to by other people. Remember that these aren't necessarily true, but these are things that I continue to consider. I felt too naive, too childlike, too gullible and too avoidant of what the world has to offer.

But bad, because I do miss my religious experiences, getting that unexpressable high after praying in the chapel. Or after serving in church.

Serving in church had become a daunting task because of an event that turned for the worst. I won't share this in the blog; the closest people in my life have known what happened and I am happy they have understood my choice to distance myself. Maybe this has even affected my faith life, and why I am in this in the first place. I don't know. I am praying for maturity, and for this person to understand that I will not be belittled and be angered no more.

I am still praying to God that He preserve me from anything that could hinder me from continuing this journey, or anything that could halt the journey prematurely. Needless to say, I am not ready to die. I still wear my scapular and miraculous medal, with the hope that Mary's love for me would never change. Although I have chosen to continue the journey differently, I still recognize the fact that it is leading me to something that I still don't know. I am still praying, but neither am I denying myself of the things that would make me human.

Someday, I know I could pray to God with the language that I am trying to teach my soul. I am already starting to try.

San Ignacio de Loyola, ruega por mí.

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