There is no physicality to love, it can’t be proven or extracted or quantified.
Yet, it is the greatest form of ecstasy available to mankind.
It is the greatest elusive form that will not take shape till one commits to creating love out of nothing.
Yet, everything around us conditions us not to create it, but destroy and deny it.
However, it could be when one recognises love exists in the universe and we are all creations of love, that it could materialise into ecstasy by the form of numerous creations one could potentially create out of creating love and beauty to the world. It is the air we breathe, the songs we sing, the movements we make. Every part of us is filled with love, and without love, there is no aliveness. For love is aliveness itself.
Love is in the form of dynamic movement between individuals, groups and it radiates out to the universe, that they share the love we have for each other, baking and partaking in it in an endless dance in the cosmos. Love contributes all over the way it is and the way it isn’t. Love is the space beyond words. It has never been bounded by space and time, and love will exist even when we are gone, love will remain where it is, and where it isn’t. For humans had created the context of love to live into, and from this context, we can create and create, build and build on being magnificent in our love for each other.
I love you. For this, I beat on against the currents like the boats in the sea for the love lives on deep inside me.
In the film, the main character, Neo, is offered the choice between a red pill and a blue pill. The red pill would allow him to escape from the Matrix and into the real world, therefore living the “truth of reality” even though it is a harsher, more difficult life; the blue pill would lead him to staying in the Matrix, living in a pretend comfortable world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pill_and_blue_pill
As it is with choices, we pretend that we have the best of all worlds, when in fact at any one point of time, there is a continuous choosing of what we want our life to be. At each point of time, we are given choices, but we make decisions by killing off reasons. Decisions are not choices. A choice is a freedom to choose based on a future possibility that would unfold in the future. Making a decision based on past based reasons that we arrive at a making a decision.
Choices are powerful.
Decisions are destructive.
It is either one takes the red or blue pill, at any point in time. It is not possible to take both pills. It is not possible to be forced to take a pill. It is a choosing that one chooses one option over the other based on the future possibility that could unfold. Inauthentic fears and reasons that hold us back from making choices to arrive at decisions. It is most often the case when we commit to something by choosing it powerfully. However, we end the commitment to the very thing we chose by making a decision based on past reasons. However, it is powerful to arrive at a choice to start, and a choice to end the matter started.
For example, when starting a new job, one chooses the job. But in ending the contract, one decides to end the contract based on reasons, “not suited for the job etc.” However, it is powerful to end a commitment by choosing to end the job contract based on a choice instead of a reason. The freedom of choice allows us to be freed up of resentment and anger or bitterness to the very thing we chose at the onset. The moment we choose to end a commitment, based on our choice to end, there is lightness and freedom to create new possibilities. If we detest the ending, it traps us in a vicious cycle of reasons and justifications that hold us back into the past, and we are unable to move forward without dragging the past into the future.
To start from a clean blank state requires courage in choosing.
I was cast as the lead actress in a high school play when I was fourteen. I was given a script to memorise and put through an intensive program in the school play production. Day after day, we would rehearse our performance under extremely stressful conditions. As with lead roles, I was assigned a double. The double would replace me in the event I fell sick on the actual performance day. Deep inside me, I had a fear she would replace me, she would take my role and all my hard work will go to waste. If I couldn’t recite one line, my heart rate went up and I had a fear that my coach would remove me from the role.
The production went well and we performed at Victoria Theater, the very theater that I used to run around and hide under the velvet curtains. I fulfilled on acting in a theater production in a lead role, for my first footsteps on stage was to give flowers to musicians after their performances to the applause of the audience. This time, the audience was clapping for my performance.
Since the experience of being cast lead, “I will replace you,” has been my detriment. It ticks me off. It could be anyone saying it to me. “My ex could do those things you can’t.”, “If she can do it, why can’t you?” The very sensation of being replaced is the reason why I couldn’t perform publically without the fear I would be removed. I did everything I could to ensure I would not be replaced, I have my own YouTube channel, wrote my own books and stayed away from finding a job that where I would be “replaced”. After discovering this is my biggest constraint and blindspot, I gave up this up completely.
I no longer fear being replaced, for I am simply, irreplaceable.
In this transient passage of time, we will meet others in our path. One thing for sure is that we are all going to die. What we make now from our journey to the point of death is the only thing that matters. From this blank state of canvas, what is the picture we will paint today for our reality? What is the world we will create around us?
I discovered through disappearing, that everything becomes nothing. Like a black hole, everything gets sucked into nothingness and dissipates. We inherently have the ability to disappear problems by recreating, reconstituting, reconstructing. The very act of disappearing is a black hole phenomenon. We have the ability to disappear and recreate, disappear and recreate. It is an ongoing what we declare in language that constitutes what happens next, next and next.
I never felt ready for the world, I held back and limited myself by letting my fears take over who I am. But who I am for the world is beyond who I am, I am ready to take flight, I am ready to disappear myself and reconstitute and recreate my reality by consideration. By consideration by waving a magic wand, I can create a life that contributes love, beauty and knowledge all over in all my interactions with others.
There was no love, no beauty, no soul, radiating out of my writings or creative works for the past few years. For as far as a I can remember, I bottled my emotions in a jar and never let it out. I was afraid of showing the world who I was, and being up to something bigger than myself. I kept myself locked in a cage in a self inflicted masochistic suffering for no reason. It was a small game, and it made me grew smaller, and smaller till I lost significance of who I was.
I covered my insecurities with acquiring wealth, with travels, with luxury fine dining and goods. I ran away from my family and friends for years in circles, and I never confronted my past. I would not commit to anything, but I did the very basic things to survive life by getting things out of others, to the point of being manipulative. I was in a bad shape, and I never looked at myself in the mirror without feeling disgusted with the way I was. I would not look at myself in the mirror, for I see nothing reflected back at me.
To myself, I am a disgusting human being who is dirty, unclean and filthy. As much as I try to upkeep my appearances by diligently following a set of skin care and work out routines, deep inside me I abhor the way I looked. I wondered why people kept staring at me. Why did they keep looking at me. Why people kept asking if I am actress, if I am Eurasian, if I am this and that, and why can’t they just speak to me as the way I am.
I traced my ancestry and there is not a slight drop of European genes in my genetics although my hair and eye colour is dark brown. It is a genetic mutation. Being of a unique exotic look meant I was the center of every social situation attention. I hated how I look. Why can’t I be pure chinese, or ordinary looking, why can’t I just blend in and be like everyone else. Why can’t I be… why was a gifted with a look that made me stand out from others?
It is the difference in the way I look that made me an outcast in school, I would get caught every year for dying my hair although I didn’t. My hair appears copper red under sunlight. It is naturally occurring. My tuition teacher would put my hair under the lamp light and examine it, wondering why my hair colour is brownish copper red. He came up with a theory it was iron production. Whatever it is, I was disgusted with my genetics, that I didn’t fit in or belonged to any social situation.
There was no love, no beauty, no nothing. There was angst, hate, disgust, destruction from within me. I would dream about what zombies to kill, how to dominate my opponents in the online games I was engaged in, how to conquer fortresses and how to manage teams of people to do so. I was nominated guild leader in a number of guilds, and my last post was being a guild officer of a top ranked guild in world of warcraft before my best friend and I decided to quit gaming to pursue our life dreams. Everywhere I went, leadership followed me like a shadow, but I never responded to the calling. I never faced who I was and I ran away from my creations, my shadows, my past and my future. I spiraled downwards to the point I was too exhausted to run, too feeble to resist, and too weakened – that I stopped avoiding.
By facing my past present and future fully, I am regaining the reins of my life, restoring the parts of my identity I rejected, and being a whole and complete person by making a declaration of who I am to the world. That it is my word that who I am is to radiate love and beauty in all my relationships, and contribute knowledge to the future generations to come. I accept the way I look in the mirror, and I no longer hate my genes. I accept that I have a unique look and that’s what I am gifted with. I will use my gifts to contribute to the world, and be beyond who I am by being there for others. I will create reality by consideration by consciously creating the world I want to see today and I will no longer run away from who I am.
I am currently on ACT 3 of Purple Python, and as always, I am encountering an internal resistance to finish the book. I tend to leave my projects at 90% completion and run away. But I had broke out of that pattern by completing all my short stories by compiling them, as well as publishing two novels. The internal state of resistance sets in when I am about the write the final two scenes. It is not a new occurrence, it is already always there, and I have an urge to run. I spent 40 minutes walking around yesterday but I got stuck. Today, I wrote half a scene and got stuck again. I am now writing this to overcome my anxiety and fear of completing the book.
I wrote the ending of Blue Orca only after revising its second draft, then I finally wrote the ending scene. But I don’t want to do it with this book, I want to write the ending. I want to end the first draft and move on to the second draft. I am sick and tired of my own internal resistance. I know it is gonna end but I am enjoying the roller coaster ride too much to get off. I have to get off and start my other projects. I filmed four audio clips by Risque yesterday and went on a beta live stream for 30 minutes today, but they are just temporary side distractions from the main project which is to finish the goddam novel.
I am on a hyper-productive drive but my body is shutting down, it wants to travel, nap and walk. It doesn’t want to write the ending. My body sensations tell me to leave my project 90% complete. It’s ridiculous how I spent 4 years completing the Red Hourglass from inception. Ridiculous to overcome my comfortableness by travelling to a few cities to complete the book. The second book, I kept to a daily regime and wrote it from start to finish within a stipulated time frame. But for the Purple Python, I am thrown off my schedule and I am back on it, but it is giving me difficulty. In the sense that my writing is elevated and I don’t know how to control the monster I created. It’s defeating me. But I know this are just inauthentic fears trying to rip me, and I should just take control back of the writing and be the author that I am.
Writing a book has been a self-discovery journey, and there is no way I could write without confronting my own demons. I had dealt with them, that it is all complete as of now. Even my nightmares, they had stopped. My flashbacks, they had disappeared. What is left now is the space between my hands and the keyboard. Between my thoughts and words on the page. That I have to write it out and let it go and not keep it within me.
For the story exists within me and all I have to do is express it.
I had wound up being where I am today because of what I had inherited from my environment – a childhood surrounded by libraries and books, a competitive streak as a result of my teenage gaming years, a series of broken relationships due to my dysfunctional nature of being unable to receive love, a love for art and theater and travel from what I was exposed to. It is an inherited context that I wound up being where I am today as an author of two books, a YouTube channel with two million views and an entrepreneur.
I wound up being a dysfunctional solitary person who believes “I am not understood and the world is full of suffering.” that propels me to do what I do, without any need for recognition. I had doubled people’s incomes and set them onto their life path just by them having a conversation with me. There are layers upon layers most people are unable to confront, which I unwrap till it reaches the core before they are set free into a path of who they truly are.
In the process, I am disappearing myself completely by being there for others, in my community and the world. In the disappearance of myself, only can universalism arise. I am disappearing my need for validation, for the need of love, for the need of anything egotistical. I am disappearing myself, by being in the eyes of others.
In my disappearance, I am letting go of my need for a lover, my need for a soul mate, my needs for anyone to satisfy any of my wants. I am letting go of the loves in my life, and my broken past, my nightmares, my flashbacks, my pain and my pleasure.
I am fully engrossed in reality by being there for others, being the person I truly am. In my disappearance, I have broken out of the cocoon and I am free to soar the skies as a butterfly.
Painted Skin is about love, coming from the same author who wrote the story behind The Fox Lovers Movie deriving from Strange Stories From a Chinese Studio. It is a supernatural Chinese classical story based on myths and legends believed by common people in that era – that demons, fox spirits and supernatural powers exist in the backdrop of unorthodox Taoist beliefs to deal with them. In Painted Skin, a warrior rescues a demon who disguised herself as a victim of bandits – she was at the point of getting raped when the warrior rescued her. They fall in love at the point of him rescuing her from the bandits. He brings her home and takes her in as a family member. The tension in the story lies with the fact that the warrior is already married to a woman, and he believes that he has to remain loyal, when in fact, he is in love with the young girl.
In the events that unfold, they find themselves in situations that push the norms of love and marriage conventions at that era.
There are several love triangles at play:
The wife has a past lover who is a war hero, who has came back to the village to hunt down the demon.
Unknown to all, the demon who had disguised herself as a lovely young girl is the source of deaths in the city
The female demon has a male demon lover who kills villagers at night to bring their hearts to feed her, although she is in love with a human, the male demon doesn’t care.
The war hero is still in love with the wife and thinks her husband bringing back a young girl to his home is infringing on her modesty.
At the end, all the characters had to confront what it is to experience true love by letting go.
The wife had to confront that her husband is in love with the female demon and commit suicide so that they can pursue happiness.
The male demon had to accept that the female demon doesn’t love him but has fallen in love with a human, which greatly insults him but he will be there for her nevertheless
The war hero had to accept that the wife did not choose him, but that doesn’t mean he loves her and will be there for her in the moment of crisis.
The female demon had to confront that she could not be selfish in her love and that love wasn’t about getting what she wants, but about letting others pursue their happiness
The demon hunter could only open her sealed sword only by the expression of love and not hate. Only the expression of love could enable her to kill the demons.
I truly enjoyed the movie, especially the pool scene which finally expressed the authentic feelings of the husband, that although he keeps denying what is there, that he is truly in love with the demon by having a vivid dream of her in a red dress, going into a hidden pool behind a cave, and making love in the passionately in an illicit romance that existed as a fantasy but he could not enact in reality due to the fact he was married. It was the moment of revelation in the whole movie that the husband was pretending that there was nothing going on, that he didn’t consider the young girl as his lover, but he kept it so hidden well in his thoughts to be a good husband and general, to the extent he sacrificed his own freedom and expression of love by declining to take on a mistress. Which, was the biggest mistake he made for he could have a wife and a mistress and it would be what he actually wanted, instead of his pretence that he had to prove he is “better than that”.
I spend most of my waking moments in solitude. It is the nature of my profession, of the way I wound up being. That I am extremely uncomfortable when people are watching and when there are eyes on me. My identity comes up and I have a compulsion to run away or act up. It’s only when I am performing at something, like on stage, or a dance recital that I am comfortable with the fact people are looking at me. In all my ordinariness I am as shy as hell.
Networking events are my ultimate challenge. I have to talk to total strangers. I have a script in my head but my words come out weird and intangible. Over time I overcame my shyness and became more confident in front of strangers, I go on stage and speak and ask questions in conferences. Afterwards, people would come up to me and acknowledge me for sharing and participating. It is exceptional for me to get out of being shy and just be with people. It’s really not who I am but the way I have to be to uphold myself on what I am up to.
To most people I am never shy, my friends would describe me as a super powerful woman. When I am back in my solitude, I truly perform at my optimal best. But I know in the long run, I have to be able to perform even in uncomfortable situations, or when thousands of people are looking at me fumbling around. I have to learn to be not in control, to regain control over the fact I am not in control. That’s my next frontier of what I will overcome to be able to speak at conferences in front of thousands of people.
