MANILA: Summer is here. And best of all, it's free!
I'm also free. Anywhere your group, club or association is in the Philippines, you may invite me to give you a free 3-4 hours of a Creattitudes Workshop in Creative Writing, Nonfiction. It's all in your attitudes. At the very least, you'll enjoy it, and so will I. And why wouldn't you, when I will show you on the big screen, using your LCD projector, how I inspire myself, how I write and rewrite, and how you can be like me. Wouldn't you want to find out when you learn that, would you believe, I'm 72?
You can do it! Like I like to say, age doesn't matter because gray matter doesn't age when it's creative. Among other things, 2 years ago, 2011, I received the first-ever award, "Outstanding Alumnus for Creative Writing" from the UP Los Baños Alumni Association, with Pids Rosario of Madecor as Chair, the result of an international selection that included alumni abroad. You can say this was practice winning over theory; the main criterion was excellence in writing by any alumnus who did not study to be a writer. I did not even study DevCom, or Journalism. I studied to be a teacher. I have written 6 books published abroad by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics as a consulting writer (ICRISAT is based in India). I am a self-taught writer, so you can say that I teacher have taught myself extraordinarily well, thank you very much!
So, with me as Workshop Head, if you are young, you will learn from the wisdom of the young once. If you are adult, you will learn from the experience of a self-tutored man. If you are old, you should be so inspired! One of my author idols, the British radical & wit George Bernard Shaw, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 at age 69, was still writing wonderfully the year before he died at 94 in 1950.
In the photograph, I'm looking out on top of the Carmen bridge in Rosales in Pangasinan, the bancas rowing into the noonday sun along the mighty Agno River. When your mind is creative, the thoughts will flow as the waters flow in the expansive Agno River. Attend my free workshop and you'll see!
All the more so now that my Creattitudes Workshop just had a rebirth, literally a renewing of the mind, to borrow from Romans 12. I'm excited to tell you today that in the last few days, I have had another creative awakening of the conscious and subconscious.
It started last Saturday, 23 March 2013, when I first heard about Ho'oponopono, an ancient practice of repairing broken relationships by the Hawaiians and other Polynesians. I have since written 2 essays on it. When first I heard it, at once I knew how valuable it was, because I knew from personal experience that healing your hurts enriches your mind.
Brainstorming on the concept by myself, I saw that Joe Vitale's 4 phrases of the reinvented Ho'oponopono needed reengineering itself, as it could not complete the healing process (see my essay "Healing reinvented by Vitale. Eppie Brasil's & my Ho'oponopono," 24 March 2013, blogspot.com). In your contemplation with Ho'oponopono, your healing is only half-healing, because you are supposed only to heal yourself, not also heal the wounds you have inflicted on others. I hope Sister Eppie Brasil knows better with her Regina Rosarii Institute for Contemplation in Asia in Tanay (reginarica.org). "We have become a center for healing," she said the first time I heard her.
Analyzing further, I found that Joe Vitale's version of the Ho'oponopono is less powerful than the old Polynesian model, and that my reinvention of his reengineering returns the original power of healing not only individuals but families and even the whole village (see my "Healing Without Forgiving. Joe Vitale's Selfish, Limited, Vulnerable Ho'oponopono," 26 March 2013, blogspot.com).
Hearing about Ho'oponopono for the first time from Sister Eppie, immediately I saw that it could be turned into a powerful device to open the mind to infinite creativity - because I already knew from years of personal hurts that healing is the St Peter's key to the door of Creativity Activity Heaven.
To recapitulate: Joe Vitale's 4 phrases for healing are "I love you" and "Please forgive me" and "I am sorry" and "Thank you." Alone, you are supposed to meditate using those as mantra, speaking them one after the other to nobody (see image above). Repeating and repeating and repeating. Gleb Esman says, "These phrases repeated will ignite the self-transformation process for the practitioner" (idreamcatcher.com). In meditating, repeat the phrases enough and the feelings become real and liberating. Esman says, "(To whom) do you say these phrases? Essentially you just say them. No need to feel anything special, imagine anything, or otherwise to complicate this process." Say them to the wind.
Very powerful phrases. But then I saw that meditating on those 4 phrases leads only to incomplete healing. Alone and saying them to no one in particular, "I love you" and "Please forgive me" and "I am sorry" and "Thank you" lead you to mend your broken heart - but not your broken relationships with other people! You're a new man but only half a new man. So I thought of a new group of 4 phrases: "I Forgive You" and "I Beg You" and "I Love You" and "I Thank You" (see image here).
More than that, unlike in Joe Vitale's Ho'oponopono, your affirmations are told to actual people, alive, those with whom you wish to feel good and whole again. It would be next to impossible, but if you mean what you say, each personal encounter would truly be a liberating and complete experience for both you and the other person, and not a selfish one like Joe Vitale's.
If you look at the images here that I have drawn, they both actually reflect a cross, a triumphant cross, with that of the 4 I's even more victorious, because of the overall message of complete healing. The cross with a circle is known as the Bolgar cross or Sunwheel, representing the great Medicine Wheel of Life (Wikipedia). The cross was intentional - after all, I am a writer who happens to be a Roman Catholic. The triumphant cross is the triumphant Christ.
Now then, what I called The 4 I's of Ho' in my 24 March essay is what I'm going to use from now on to conduct my free or pay Creattitudes Workshops for Creative Writing, Nonfiction. Now you ask, how in the world can the phrase-sentences "I Forgive You" and "I Beg You" and "I Love You" and "I Thank You" be used as devices to generate more creative ideas in a Creative Writing Workshop? That's what I'm going to do and that's what you're going to find out if you attend my workshop.
Which Creattitudes Workshop? I have the Creative High for high school students, Creative Call for college students, and Creative Yes for professionals in any field of theory or practice. I want to encourage you. In Creative High we will work on faith; in Creative Call we will work on hope; and in Creative Yes we will work on love and hate. Actually, if you're creative, you can work on all of those anytime at all.
Why am I doing this? Because nobody has a mind to do it, and I have. And yes, it is all in English, because English is the competitive advantage of us Filipinos over many countries in Asia, including Australia and Africa.
If you are in Luzon, there shouldn’t be any problem. I love to travel by bus, and will come to you as far North as Laoag City or as far South as Legazpi City.
So, if you have a group, club or association, email me at frankahilario@gmail.com. Email is free, and so is any one of my 3-4 hour workshops to fit your field or interest, to turn your sluggish minds into summer minds where the sun is always shining!