Your mantra for the week: “My imagination is a powerful tool to create greater good.”

 

Set your goals, believe, and you will see. Use your imagination, it is there for you. However, it can be limited by what you believe to be reality. Many eliminate from their imagination what they believe is not realistic—forgetting that with God all things are possible.

 

Setting your goals covers all areas of your life. You can begin with the kind of body you desire—your ideal weight, shape, and look. Use your imaging power—just because you don’t see it now does not mean it does not exist, for it does in the Mind of God and that Mind is what everyone uses.

 

But the how-it-will-come is not your business; it is God’s. But once your goal has been set, claim it to be true and behave in such a manner.

 

When you have no goals, you attract all forms of information—facts that you might find irrelevant to your life, random data, sporadic details. All these happen because you have not decided what direction you want to go.

 

How much money do you aspire for? You may have any amount you want, as long as you also know what you are going to use it for.

 

The One Mind, like a father, as in the Father, would like to know your plans and what good you would like to create with it—something like a feasibility study. The subconscious mind needs this information to manifest it more quickly and in peace.

 

Your imagination provides you with the ability to visualize a goal. For without it, your life would not know which course to take. Confusion arises and a confused mind creates a vicious cycle that is aptly described by the lyrics of a popular song, “Windmills of Your Mind”: “Round like a circle in a spiral/ Like a wheel within a wheel/ Never ending or beginning/ On an ever spinning reel…”

 

What kind of relationships are you longing for? Do you really know or are you simply saying I desire love in my life? Do you know what love means?

 

Believing is seeing, which is unlike the adage, “To see is to believe.” It is time for you now to use your imagination to expand your idea of reality, for only that which you believe can become real for you.

 

Many of us refer to our desires as fantasy, which immediately closes the door to its manifestation even when it already exists in the subconscious mind—except that you cannot see it yet.

 

Your subconscious mind contains everything and, therefore, when you decide what you want to do with your life, the doors open to move you in that direction. But the mind has to be directed by a desire—an aspiration, a hankering, a yearning, and a determination to bring it forth.

 

Be still, enter that Kingdom now and listen… It will be saying to you, welcome my beloved, here I Am for you. As always, My whole Kingdom is yours. Choose now what you desire. It is My greatest pleasure to give it to you.

 

Think, feel, act, and believe you are worthy and deserving. Now, say to yourself, I am truly a winner, never a sinner.

 

Fear-stricken

 

Countless people were fear-stricken when the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) announced a potentially disastrous earthquake due to the West Valley Fault, which may occur between now and the next hundred years or more.

 

And with the planned earthquake drill in July, many are convinced something earthshaking is about to happen.

 

Please be reminded that the drill is simply to inform the public what to do during an earthquake to prevent panic and chaos.

 

But I believe our consciousness as a people can actually forestall an earthquake by overcoming our fears. To paraphrase Moses, the fear that you fear is upon you. We can change our consciousness from earthshaking angers and our unceasing baka and eh kung (what ifs) and instead visualize the correction of the West Valley Fault and give constructive recommendations to improve present conditions.

 

Fear and anger create vibrations that could make the earth quake. I suspect that the people in Nepal were fearful and angry, with or without basis, that the Chinese would do them in. I sustain that this was a case in which Mother Nature responded to the mass-mind consciousness of distress and rage.

 

This concept may not be easy to understand, but it comes close to the idea that “The voice of the people is the voice of God.”

 

However, this will help us affirm peace and harmony and do everything we can in our inner world to counter our anxieties and dismay—and in our external domain reinforce our homes and buildings not because of earthquakes, but because it is the right thing to do like Japan building its structures to deal with earthquakes of any kind.

 

We have the intelligence to equal the Japanese, but unfortunately we suffer by comparison in terms of discipline and resolve.

 

Someone asked me what she should do if a building fell on her. There is nothing much she can do except to plan for her second coming—even if it’s just sexual. And that is earthshaking enough!

 

Then and now

 

Meanwhile, looking back on my Conde de Makati days in 1972:

 

“I ran into Joe de Venecia, looking great minus 20 pounds at Christian’s Boutique. ‘I may look slimmer but my weight has not really changed,’ (he said). ‘I have around 20 lb of scrap iron still embedded in my right shoulder.’ He should be thankful. Other congressmen have a lot of crap in the mouth instead.”

 

Surely, we have moved on but the crap still remains with some congressmen.

 

“Herminia Onstott was advising a group of friends to start selling their properties and migrate fast to another country because ‘the Communists are coming.’ Silence reigned profound at the dinner table. Herminia apparently was the only one who still had properties not mortgaged.”

 

Now, the communists have come. They are in Spratly Islands and no one is planning to move out of the country and neither are the Chinese from Spratly. I wonder whether the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier would make a dent, probably not. They are in Philippine waters and, unfortunately, waters merely wave.

 

“Chito Madrigal calls Maning Collantes ‘the informer.’ ‘Alam mo naman itong si Maning, talagang tuta’ to which Maning answered, ‘It is my pleasure to be a tuta, especially Chito’s tuta.’ Tutahanan ’yan.”

 

“Melly de Leon says she was still a virgin when she got married. Poor Melly, her statement merely dates her.”

 

Welcoming a ‘balikbayan’

 

Ann and Rene Puno welcomed a close balikbayan friend who is in town for a few days but who would like to remain anonymous for personal reasons. I suspect he must be hiding from some former wife or something like that.

 

Ann went out of her way to make sure everything was home-cooked, from the appetizers such as cheese sticks, beef chorizo de jamon bites. Then there was the fabada followed by romaine and arugula salad with feta cheese, singkamas and pear slices with a choice of homemade balsamic and Caesar dressing; bacalao pasta with angel hair noodles; steamed banak fish wrapped in kale leaves; and her famous chicken relleno plus the pièce de résistance, the cochinillo. For dessert: guyabano/strawberry/blueberry sorbet, frozen mango cream, double Chocnut cake and cassava cake.

 

The indefatigable chef of chefs, Glenda Barretto, remarked: “Ann, my fabada and cochinillo are good but yours are really better.”

 

Ann was so grateful that she even agreed to do a duet with Pilita Corrales, who regaled us with song after song and a heartrending finale of “Kahit Isang Saglit.” Carlos Lopez (Pilita’s doting husband) surprised us, too, with his guitar and harmonica skills.

 

Friends of the honoree were truly impressed with the preparation and festivities.