A Spoonful of Sugar 2006 No. 3
When You Know
By Niña Terol

I can remember it almost vividly: I was working in front of my computer, at around 9AM on July 25 or 26, 2003, when this song by Shawn Colvin came on Jam 88.3. I had never heard the song before, but tears streamed from my eyes right after the first line was sung:

When You Know
By Shawn Colvin
(From the Serendipity official soundtrack)

When you know that you know who you love, you can't deny it.

Or go back, or give up, or pretend that you don't buy it.

When it's clear this time you've found the one, you'll never let him go

’Cause you know and you know that you know.

When you feel in your skin, in your bones, and the hollow

Of your heart, there's no way you can wait till tomorrow.

When there isn't any doubt about it once you come this close

’Cause you know and you know that you know.

You can feel love's around you like the sky 'round blue

This is how love has found you, now you know what to do.

When you know that you know who you need, you can't deny it.

Or go back, or give up, or pretend that you don't buy it.

When it's clear this time you've found the one, you'll never let him go

’Cause you know and you know that you know.

And it's time you come in from the cold.

Haaa...

And you know that you know.

That feeling of love finally found was so overwhelming that I just sat there—listening, crying, smiling, thanking the Universe for leading me to that One Person who would make my life’s journey worthwhile. It’s been three years, some fights, many ups and down, and countless memories later, and I still feel the same way—maybe even stronger—than I did when I first heard that song and declared that my heart was forever taken.

But intuition—this feeling of knowing—isn’t just applicable in romance. Every day the Universe sends us little signals that somehow nudge us towards a particular direction. Whether you call it “the little voice in your head”, gut feeling, or instinct, intuition is alive and active, and it plays a large role in how we make our decisions—especially major, life-changing ones.

For some strange reason (and maybe it’s the Reason of Intuition that I’ll never be able to fully grasp that’s speaking to me) I’ve been drawn to the subject of intuition for some time now. As I mentioned in my first blog entry for the year, last weekend I came across a magazine (Tricycle: The Buddhist Review) and a book (Deepak Chopra’s SynchroDestiny) that discussed the mind-body connection and how we can harness our connection to the Cosmos. But even before that I was already deeply into New Age Spirituality and that whole discourse about ESP, intuition, and psychic ability.

Then, just this morning I look a test on Tickle (formerly Emode, through www.emode.com) about psychic powers. There were some pretty subjective questions (something like, “You know who is calling even before you pick up the phone, even without caller ID”), but there were a lot of objective questions, such as: “There is a picture at the back of this card (a blank, gray card). What picture is it?” and “How may flower vases are in Tickle’s office?”

Just like many people, I picked the answers that “spoke to me” the most—just as when I’m faced with a multiple-choice test and really don’t know what on earth the answer is. Although I pretty much guessed that I’d score higher than most (my spiritual mentors once told me that I have pretty strong intuitive abilities), my Tickle results, however brief, put me on edge:

Nina, you have an unusually strong psychic talent in the area of Precognition

This means you have an uncanny ability to look into the future and anticipate what is going to happen. By knowing something's going to occur, you can even change the outcome of events for the better. Nina, our in-depth analysis also shows you have other hidden psychic strengths including retrocognition (the ability to know what has happened in the past), telepathy (the ability to sense people's true thoughts) and clairvoyance (the ability to see the unknown).

Of course, there’s always the possibility of these tests being hokey-pokey, but when a lot of the questions are objective and you just somehow guessed most of them correctly—and there’s no human intervention or bias anywhere in the interpretation—then that’s something to really think about.

Now I realize that it’s probably why I am always able to find my mom in a huge, crowded mall even when both our phones are on low-batt and we weren’t able to set a meeting place before seeing each other. Or why, as the Tickle questions did ask, I almost always pick up my phone before it starts ringing (and can guess who the caller is even before the name flashes on my screen). Or why Paul always tells me that I say things just as soon as they enter his mind (we call it “mental SMS-ing”). Or why, early this morning, I could somehow smell popcorn in the bedroom (while we were still sleeping), only to find that Paul left me a (sealed and odorless) pack of caramel popcorn out in the kitchen. Or why, even more strangely, I dreamt about two buildings collapsing (one in Adriatico, another in Makati) and an earthquake a few days before these actually occurred.

Maybe there really IS something more to those hunches, sparks of inspiration, and whispers in my head.

I would really like to do more research on intuition, extrasensory perception, and psychic phenomenon, not only for everyday living but for business and management as well. Dr. Chopra’s books are always a good place to start, as are Dr. Jaime Lichauco’s, but I’ll be on the lookout for more references that I can use to guide me in my “studies”. If any of you out there can point me to some interesting leads, please let me know (nina.terol@gmail.com). I’ll definitely be chronicling my findings here, and probably elsewhere, too.

What an interesting intellectual adventure this is turning out to be for me!

Namaste!

A Spoonful of Sugar 2006 No. 2
Painting Pantoums
by Niña Terol


While reading Writer's Digest, I came across an article about the pantoum, a style of poetry that originated in France and was based on an oral form in Malaysia (called the "pantun"). The basic form of the pantoum is the quatrain—a four-line stanza—with each quatrain’s second and fourth lines repeated throughout the poem.

Its basic structure is as follows:

Line 1
Line 2
Line 3
Line 4

Line 2

(Put the second line of the previous stanza as this stanza’s first line)
Line 5
Line 4

(Put the last line of the previous stanza as this stanza’s third line)
Line 6

Line 5

(Put the second line of the previous stanza as this stanza’s first line)
Line 7
Line 6

(Put the last line of the previous stanza as this stanza’s third line)
Line 8

And so on. You can choose how long to go and how to end your pantoum, but you usually close the poem by making Line 3 the second line of your final stanza, and Line 1 the lady line of your poem.

I got so intrigued by this and so decided to write one as some form of writing practice. The pantoum that I will share with you below is quite elementary—really—but I think it’s a pretty good start.

For all the writers (and even the non-writers) out there, try it out! You might find that writing pantoums is a great warm-up exercise to limber up those storytelling or feature-writing muscles.

CRASH
by Niña Terol

Like water from the ocean
We are One—a single thought with a million waves
There is no beginning and no ending
But if you don’t swim you’ll drown

We are One—a single thought with a million waves
Like a prism, one light becomes a rainbow of colours
But if you don’t swim you’ll drown
In the tapestry of patterns, rhythms, and motions

Like a prism, one light becomes a rainbow of colours
Immersed in its nuances, forgetting its oneness
In the tapestry of patterns, rhythms, and motions
We get lost in our own light

Immersed in its nuances, forgetting its oneness
The vast ocean turns into torrents of rain
We get lost in our own light
When all we see is what will never be

The vast ocean turns into torrents of rain
Streaming, crashing, drowning all within in
When all we see is what will never be
The light will never shine

Streaming, crashing, drowning all within it
The tide overtakes my love
The light will never shine
And the clouds cover an empty velvet sky

The tide overtakes my love
Remnants of memories sink deeper into the abyss
And the clouds cover an empty velvet sky
As if light did not exist

Remnants of memories sink deeper into the abyss
And I, alone, sink along with it
As if light did not exist
Daytime and darkness are one

In the dusk and the dawn of my eternal despair
There is no beginning and no ending
Love and hatred are one
Like water from the ocean

(Finished: 21 August 2006 6:34PM)

A Spoonful of Sugar 2006 No. 1

Craving No More
By Niña Terol


Do you believe in coincidences? Do you believe that there is a purpose to every little thing that happens to you? A little shopping expedition opened me up to so many things this morning, and I can’t wait to find out how the rest of the story will unfold…

Late this morning I awoke with a start. It was already 10AM by the time my eyelids had found the strength to flutter open; it was obviously way past my usual waking time. But today being a Saturday, I lingered on in bed for a while longer before getting up to get ready for my favorite Saturday morning activity: shopping.

My agenda for this morning was to walk to our neighborhood Book Sale shop and scour the pile for back issues of foreign magazines that I can bring to work and use as pegs for our projects. A “peg” is a project (be it a magazine, an article, or a photograph) on which to base our creative samples, or “studies”; since my company has a variety of custom publications to produce over the next few weeks, I decided to shop for brain fuel.

And, besides, I hadn’t read nor written anything in ages. I figured that it’s just about time for my brain to get the exercise it deserves.

Before heading to Book Sale, I decided to stop by SM to limber up my legs and flex my shopping muscles. I had been shopping for clothes for about three weekends now, so I was pretty sure that I’d be only window-shopping there. But the sight that greeted me when I entered SM Harrison took me by (pleasant surprise): there was a magazine sale right in the center of the department store! Foreign magazines, some dating as far back as 2004, were being sold for just fifteen bucks apiece! There were so many titles and themes to choose from—popular ones such as Harper’s Review, The New Yorker, GQ, and Rolling Stone; obscure but interesting ones such as Players (a gambling magazine), Elemental Magazine (a pop culture magazine for African Americans), Tricycle: The Buddhist Review; and one of my favorite magazines of all time, Writer’s Digest.

I was like a kid in candy heaven! I picked up magazine after magazine, until a saleslady noticed the stack that was beginning to weigh my arms down, and offered me a basket. I must’ve bought over 20 titles (all those that I had mentioned, plus a “sneak buy” entitled Grace Osmonde Wedding Style—the most expensive one at Php150) because I racked up a bill of over a thousand bucks! Never mind, I told myself, this is food for the soul. And, besides, my team at the office would definitely love these.

My next stop was the tiangge at Harrison Plaza. My shopping muscles were just about warmed up, and I wanted to look around some more and see what finds I could bring home. For some reason, however, my eyes and my legs took me to National Bookstore. A part of me was telling myself that I shouldn’t be heading that way, since I had just spent a grand on magazines that I won’t be able to carry home, but a little voice inside me told me to just look.

Two open piles of 50%-off and 40%-off books greeted me when I entered the bookstore. One of the books that caught my eye was from Deepak Chopra, a renowned writer-physician who had built his career studying “mind/body medicine.” Entitled SynchoDestiny, the book was about “harnessing the infinite power of coincidence to create miracles.” It was a book that I had been attracted to when it first came out three years ago; now it was on sale and right under my nose. I couldn’t resist the chance to take it home.

I finished my shopping trip with several more items in tow, and by the time I got home at around 1PM I was raring to plop down on the bed and start reading. I first opened one issue of Writer’s Digest and read it practically from cover to cover without batting an eyelash. My mind was sipping all the juice that I could get from the magazine—and what a refreshing feeling it was! Then I snuck a glance at Paul, who was still deep in slumber beside me, and then I opened Wedding Style to fuel daydreams of my Big Day. A short while later, I fell asleep, blissful and extremely content.

We both woke up from our respective naps at around dinner time and began channel-surfing. For some reason, what caught Paul’s eye was a Lifestyle Network special on “Royal Weddings” and “Weddings of a Lifetime”, and I found myself fusing visions of fairytale weddings with the gowns that I had seen on the pages of Wedding Guide. I knew then that it was time to bring up a question that had been burning in my mind for a few days now.

His answer was brief, but I knew exactly what he meant by it. Just last night we were talking about investments that we plan to make during the coming year, and whether or not we wanted to get a house or a condo or a lot on the beach… All things considered, I could sense that The Big Day and settling down would be just around the corner.

But, before that, it was clear to us both that we had to reach significant milestones in our respective careers. With that in mind, I opened Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and got drawn to some articles on the mind-body connection. After a few more pages, I knew that it was time for a conversation with Dr. Chopra.

Now I had never read a Chopra book before, but I knew somehow that he and I are souls who probably travel on the same trajectory. I know a bit of what he’s trying to say without having to know him or his works, and this paragraph from his book felt right on target:

… So much of life depends on chance meetings, twists of fate, or pathways that suddenly branch out in a new direction. And it is likely that your one topic very quickly connected with many other areas of your life. You can see how, if even one tiny detail had turned out differently, you might have ended up somewhere else, with different people, engaged in different work, moving on an entirely different life trajectory.

Even when you think you have your life all mapped out, things happen that shape your destiny in ways you might never even have imagines. The coincidences or little miracles that happen every day of your life are hints that the universe has much bigger plans for you than you have ever dreamed of yourself…

(Taken from page 23 of SynchoDestiny by Deepak Chopra, copyright © 2003 by Deepak Chopra)

Somehow, all of today’s little events told me that this is exactly what I am supposed to be doing; this is exactly where I am supposed to be. Somehow, the magazines that I found told me that I was right to have quit freelancing and be part of the team that established First Media Manila; somehow, the wedding magazines and TV shows assured me that Paul and I were in a good place in our relationship; somehow, the magazine Tricycle and Chopra’s book told me that I should recognize my gifts for what they are and start writing in my blogs again. Thus, this rather lengthy piece that I am sharing with you today.

But if you’ve read my writings before, and if you’ve noticed my lengthy absence from the World Wide Web, then you’ll understand how much writing this piece means to me. It is my first piece in five months; it is the first time I’m sitting down once again to just let the words flow. It’s been far too long since the last time—and, back then, I was starved both physically and spiritually. Now that I’m feeling more fulfilled and more whole—and with a little more flesh on my bones to show for it—I hope that my words will channel this energy that I’m feeling out onto those who need it. I hope that, by feeding my brain and fueling my thoughts, I shall be helping to the void in others as well. I hope to never stop learning and to never stop writing; I thank the Universe for reminding me of that today.

And as dawn breaks on the second day of this long weekend, I look forward to opening yet another page that will speak to me; I look forward to soaking in more knowledge that will recharge my spirit and fuel my passions. I am on yet another quest, in seek of greater intellectual, spiritual, and physical adventures, and I hope to be sharing more words with you again soon.

Namaste!

(Finished: 20 August 2006, 5:13AM)