Your mantra for the week: “As I pronounce everything in my life good, it becomes so.”

Realize that life is about relationships: your relationship with God, with others and with yourself.

These depend on conversations: How do you speak to God? What kind of conversations do you have with It? What kind of talks do you have with others and with yourself? These dialogues determine the quality of your life.

Try to start every conversation with a smile. Intend to have a loving conversation—feed your thoughts with lovingness, your feelings with compassion, and let gentle words flow from consciousness, whether spoken and unspoken, because God, the only Power, responds to your every thought and feeling, whether negative or positive.

So, what you’re telling about life, your circumstances, and the people around you make up your inner dialogue with God, and God says yes to all with no judgment.

When you say, “I am unworthy,” God responds accordingly by producing events that will prove you right. It is not a punishment, but simply the Universal Law that is expressing—as you sow in your mind, so shall you create and reap in your experience.

It has been shown that each day, a person has an average of 60,000 thoughts which ultimately manifest in life. How many positive or negative thoughts do you have in a day about your body, your money, your work and the people in your life?

God is always listening. Stop focusing on the things you hate or do not like. Align your mind with all that you love and desire, and God brings them forth after their own kind.

Make it a habit to watch your 60,000 thoughts on a daily basis. Be sure to use them to put order in all areas of your life — your health, your wealth, your relationships and success.

Amorsolo’s ‘Love and Passion’

When you get an invitation to participate in any form of love and passion, it cannot be ignored, especially when it’s Fernando Amorsolo being referred to—his passion for painting and his love for beauty on the canvass.

Last Tuesday, at Rustan’s, the book “Love and Passion I and II,” covering two volumes of Amorsolo’s artworks, were relaunched, with his daughter Sylvia Amorsolo Lazo as guest of honor and project manager, Krip Yuson as editor, and Cid Reyes contributing two essays.

These days, anyone who owns an Amorsolo, whether a landscape or a portrait, is most fortunate.

My mother Priscilla has a portrait by the artist, part of the Vargas Museum collection, with the original still with the family. The unidentified photograph that she left with Amorsolo is part of the book, included in the chapter “Photographs of Clients.”

Amorsolo’s ‘doctora’

Sylvia mentioned that, on the back cover of the beautiful box that contains both volumes, Dr. Lourdes Pascual is one of the main characters in the landscape painting, “Portrait of Dra. Lourdes Pascual with Nanding (Amorsolo) and Maring (Sylvia’s mother) in a Harvest Field.” Pascual was given this honor because she was Amorolo’s anesthesiologist who often fondly talked about him, not as a patient, but as a close friend.

Andy’s confidante

Dr. Pascual, Tita Tuding to our family, is a cousin of my mother and they were fortuitously born on the same day. Ironically, she was the closest confidante of then dictator Ferdinand Marcos, “Andy” to her who she so admired and was closer to him than her blood cousin Imelda Romualdez.

Tita Tuding related that at one point, “when Andy and Meldy had a serious misunderstanding, he asked me to make sure that Meldy apologize within 24 hours or else he would legalize divorce and leave her…”

That was probably the closest the Philippines has ever gotten to a divorce law. Tita Tuding was also the first Filipino doctor to be sent to China to study acupuncture, which she later on introduced to the country.

In 2010, she was “mysteriously” murdered and has since then become a mere statistic in unsolved crimes.

Why kill her?

The only clue I personally have is that she was known to have held what was referred to as “the star document” that was supposed to have superseded all other wills and testaments of her beloved Andy. She had shown me this document three days before she was suffocated to death with her own pillow in her own bed, with all walls of her bedroom broken down and ransacked.

In her wake, someone was overheard saying, “Nahanap ba ang dokumento?”

What you get

There is a principle in IAMISM that I teach, which emphasizes you get only four things in life: the things you love, the things you hate, the things you like, and the things you do not like. Wherever your focus is, that is what you get more of.

It was well-known to many, and it has been reiterated to me, that there was one person Tita Tuding could not stand in her life. Ironically, that was her sister, who she battled with legally and almost came to blows with—in front of a judge.

As IAMISM would have it, she really got what she did not like, because upon her death, all her earthly belongings went to her sister, including a Botong Francisco mural which is now in the possession of a collector who, most of the time, lives in his yacht.

A separate portrait of Tita Tuding, not in the book, was authenticated by Sylvia in the residence of Gustaf Warns.

Legendary portraits

At the event, Johnny Litton was more than his lively self, because in Volume I of “Love and Passion,” Chichi Litton Laperal graced the cover. Johnny waxed lyrical, looking back to the time when Rustan’s was Rustan’s under Gliceria Tantoco, whose portrait and two landscapes are featured in Volumes I and II.

Sylvia was introduced by Anton Huang in behalf of his mother, Nedy Tantoco, who was suffering from a hoarse voice. Sylvia nostalgically looked back to the days when her father would be prolifically creating his now legendary portraits and landscapes.

After her speech, she graciously autographed the books which sold for more than the price of coffee-table books, proceeds of which would benefit of leukemia patients.

It was nice to see Celia Diaz Laurel looking well. Her son Cocoy said: “She is recovering very well and can actually walk with the help of a walker.”
Cocoy now lives with his mom and is still painting and is very happy to have participated in Repertory Philippines’ golden anniversary show.

Robert and Helen Lim happily announced that they shared my IAMIST prayer that began with, “Whatever is yours to give, let generosity be your measure” and that all their friends shared it with other friends.

I am looking forward to Volume III because there are many more Amorsolos that deserve to be in a coffee-table book.

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