8 Feb 2008 @ 10:46, by Erle Frayne Argonza
Asian Seekers, behold the Light coming forth from your inner spaces!
I know that you’ve been looking everywhere for teachers or gurus or ‘not-so-usual’ people who can perhaps help you ascend the heights of your Path, but few are available in your own backyards or so it seems. Believe me, there are many teachers in Asia, even in your own country, but they make their presence in so non-descript or low profile a manner that you may not even realize they are gurus when you encounter them face-to-face.
Please note the differences in styles and methods of teachers from the East and West owing to the cultural differences they’ve been exposed to. In the Philippines, as in Asia, the sayings goes that “mas malakas ang bulong kaysa sigaw” (whisper is more powerful than shout). This is the opposite in the West, where people are accustomed to articulate what they think and feel in a rather ‘noisy’ or highly noticeable manner as much as possible.
Bro. Erle Frayne D. Argonza
[Writ. 29 September 2007, Manila. See also: http://raefdargon.mysticblogs.com]
Asian Seekers, behold the Light coming forth from your inner spaces!
I know that you’ve been looking everywhere for teachers or gurus or ‘not-so-usual’ people who can perhaps help you ascend the heights of your Path, but few are available in your own backyards or so it seems. Believe me, there are many teachers in Asia, even in your own country, but they make their presence in so non-descript or low profile a manner that you may not even realize they are gurus when you encounter them face-to-face.
Please note the differences in styles and methods of teachers from the East and West owing to the cultural differences they’ve been exposed to. In the Philippines, as in Asia, the sayings goes that “mas malakas ang bulong kaysa sigaw” (whisper is more powerful than shout). This is the opposite in the West, where people are accustomed to articulate what they think and feel in a rather ‘noisy’ or highly noticeable manner as much as possible.
That’s why, whenever one surfs the internet, there are too few Asian guro (Filipino for teacher) of the Path in contrast to White/Western teachers and mystics who abound like legion. Asian gurus are busy ministering to their disciples in whispers, with one-on-one ministration or initiation often observed. White/Western gurus and mystics, on the other hand, approach the matter via ‘loud’ methods such as the internet and mass media. Only the church ministers of Asia, who were reared in the Western religious traditions, resort to mass media hypes and use the ‘loud’ techniques, and these leaders aren’t the ones Seekers look for.
So if you Seekers wish for a teacher right in your backyard, wish hard enough, and your Inner Guide will lead you not only to one but also to couples or even dozens of teachers. Only those advanced Seekers who are on the mystical path early in life need no physical guru at all, as they are ministered directly by Ascended Masters and/or Archangels from the celestial spheres. Bro. Erle, for instance, was guarded by the Arch. Michael and ministered or initiated into the Higher Mysteries directly by Ascended Master El Morya, both of whom are niched in the higher dimensions.
But in case that no teacher seems to appear, please don’t despair. For, as I said in a previous article, due to the sudden ‘surge’ of billions of souls in the physical plane, no matter if teachers are sent from Above by dozens or hundreds per country, it will still be a scarcity, as the ratio is approximately 1 guru for every 500,000 population more or less. But since Seekers constitute just about 10% of the population, the ratio results to 1 guru for every 50,000 Seekers.
Since you are Asians, you might be keen on searching for gurus who are also Asians inasmuch as the latter know the Asian psyche well more than the Western teachers do. Western teachers are more adept at configuring lessons for the Western psyche, and so you need not be surprised if the White teachers from the North often receive communications from their fellow Whites as their enthused students or apprentices.
But many Asians today are highly tech-savvy, and normally seek information via the internet and related communications media. So you dear reader may have encountered too few Lightworker groups that are Asian, and even fewer teachers who have websites, precisely because Asian Lightworkers and teachers don’t normally approach their missions via ‘loud’ methods such as the internet. You may encounter the White teachers on the internet, and chances are that you may not be able to relate well to their teachings or knowledge shared because such information are meant, whether intentionally or unconsciously, for White and White-enculturated Coloured peoples. So, unless the White teachers, mystics, Lightworker leaders would adjust their methods to reckon with the Asian psyche in their missions, they may not be able to get through to Asian Seekers at all.
Despair not, look harder, the Lightworkers Asians are just around you, and the teachers among them silently doing their work. Bro. Erle is among them, and no matter if I’m reluctant to do a teacher’s job, the Ascended Beings keep on nagging me about this task, and so with Almighty God’s blessing and the guidance of the chohans (the CEOs of the Ascended Beings more or less) I hereby boldly do this task to be able to reach out to you.
Worry not, Bro. Erle is a Filipino, reared in both Asian and Western cultures. We Filipinos are both East and West, our minds are non-dualistic, we regard both object and subject with harmony and unity (there’s no subject versus object in the Filipino and Asian psyche), and the profane and sacred are fully integrated or non-compartmentalized in our mind. So, please trust God Almighty, this being who now writes to you will meet your expectations. [Please read the works of F. Landa Jocano, Virgilio Enriquez, Jaime Bulatao, Leonardo Mercado among those experts on the Filipino-Asian mind and world view.]
You will not hear me say, for instance, “follow thy heart more than thy head.” Because we Asians are already developed in our heart, our logic is more intuitive than rational-empirical, our philosophy more concrete than abstract. And so I will never wish to appear as a silly teacher who’d carelessly make aphorisms and maxims that we Asians already follow in daily life. I’d rather remind you to strengthen further those strengths that are already in us, in case your psyche may have ‘forgotten’ such traits.
For my fellow Filipinos and non-Indian Asians, I wouldn’t hazard a recommendation to use the lotus position during yoga meditation sessions, because such a position is only fit for a particular physiological type: the peoples of the Indian subcontinent. Physical anthropologists have revealed to us scientifically the differences among our body types on account of differences in our physical environments and the cultural adaptation responses to such contexts. For the non-Indian, the lotus position can be a cause for injury when forced to the extremes, and so I’d recommend that you meditate using simple sitting position with the proper mudra, or using the supine position.
Another example would be the diet. Just because you practice yoga doesn’t mean you have to throw away a meat diet and go straight veggie diet. This is unrealistic, most specially for the busy professional who has to take breakfast or lunch outside and few if nil are the cafeterias that offer veggie meals. While the veggie meal would be a preferred diet, a dogmatic or compulsive resort to vegetarianism is another thing. Spiritual renunciation is more important than physical renunciation (vegetarianism), even as many who are physical renunciants are sadly lacking in the spiritual side of the equation. So I’d say, eat a mixed diet for your week’s meal plan, but do minimize meat due to the high toxins associated with it.
Would I recommend austere, Spartan or ascetic lifestyles? Hello, I wasn’t born yesterday! Asceticism belongs to an ancient context. Both Buddha and Jesus deconstructed asceticism of any kind and forewarned aspirants against the deleterious effects of ascetic extremism. Practice moderation in your daily consumption, but go ahead and live a prosperous life offered by a wonderful career. You deserve to live with bountiful living, for the universes abound with prosperity, and then you’d retire in life with much ‘passive income’ that you can use for your daily needs as well as your spiritual missions late in life. But if you choose a monastic life and say goodbye to active life, then please follow the precepts of your Order, live a simple austere life and focus on prayers & meditations for the rest of your life.
So, dear Asian Seekers, I will note the idiographic elements to see how universal lessons in life can fit into the cultural templates of the aspirant. If in case that I may err along the way, such as to recommend notes and practices that may not exactly cohere with your cultural templates, then please help me rectify this by sending feedbacks about what element are in your culture that I may have missed out. We are too many Asian nations, remember, and I have no pretensions of being a super-cosmic brain that knows every bit about your specific cultural elements.
Do you need to read and listen from the White gurus and messengers? By all means, please do so. If it is a felt need, please follow what your heart says: read the White gurus’ works. As I said earlier, read everything, question everything, doubt nothing. Being part-Western myself, I find critical thinking as a very useful tool in screening information that enters my brain, including those coming from gurus & masters both White and Colored. Of all things that you must prevent from doing is to romanticize every newly sounding thing you hear most specially in matters of the spirit or divine, so leave space for healthy critique as you contemplate on what you read coming from the West.
Fellow Asians, I would prefer to look at each one of you as the present Asian, and I’ve already made adjustment for this. There has been a gigantic mutation in the Asian psyche lately, more so that the winds of Western philosophy have made colossal impacts on the Asian mind. Of all the Western paradigms, I’m particularly focused on observing postmodernism and its variants: chaos theory, post-structuralism, semiotics, post-industrialism, and deconstructionism. Add to this the strong wave New Ageism. I’m sure you young fellows out there have been ‘infected’ by these mighty waves. I myself had been ‘infected’ by the contagion of these new paradigms, even as I attempted to contribute to their articulations and growth.
So, Dear Seekers, not only are you the Asians who possess commonalities in your worldviews and zeitgeist, you are also the evolving postmodern Asians. As the young breed, you carry upon your shoulders the responsibility of leading the planet in moving towards the Information Society, which will be the techno-economic modality of the entire Aquarian Age. As the West rapidly declines in importance on the techno-economic sphere, the East rises in prominence.
We are situated today at the juncture of the new techno-economic order. Western thinkers and analysts already recognized in writing that that ASEAN 4 (India, China, Korea, Japan) have already surpassed the cutting edge technologies of the North/West. The impact of this should be clear to you all: as the techno-economic sphere changes, made possible by the simultaneous changes in the cultural sphere (culture of postmodernity), so will there be corresponding changes in the approaches to the divine.
Rest assured, this mystic, guru, philosopher, social scientist, artist, development consultant is among those thinkers who anticipate future innovative developments precisely by laying their hands in the inventive/innovative processes. This goes true for my practice of analytical and development pursuits as well as for my practical pursuits in matters of the Divine and the Spirit.
So, Asian Seekers, welcome aboard!
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