The Transcendental: The Church Project

Record Breaking

March 19, 2024

Let's talk about history - the significance of history in community building and what good could come out of knowledge to do with the past as well as the bad. Of course from the lens of spirituality. It's an old assignment, and it's funny when I get sort of a notification like: Do you remember..? And I'd be like: Of course. I kind of roll my eyes to things I read from people that's got something to do with history and I sense some unhealthy relationship or attachment to history. But that's a residue of my intolerance for things I find for the lack of a better term 'mundane drama'. I roll my eyes and it sort of ends up becoming an old assignment. But I am gonna write something about it today because I'm kind of in a better mood for it.

I am a Filipino but I honestly don't have a strong sense of nationalism or I don't identify much with my nationality. Spirituality did this thing to me where I now identify more to my divinity and humanity as a community member and I also see other people in terms of their divinity and humanity than some other man-made classification. My language is now more universal than reduced to something like national. So, I would be speaking from this position and not as a Filipino with affiliations. I don't regret identifying as a Filipino 'cause if I do, I would probably be like: I'd rather be a Korean or a Japanese or whatever nationality that is. Also, I don't have regrets to do with where I've been in the past - that was part of the journey, and I wouldn't be in this position if I didn't pass that street. But spirituality stripped nationalism away from my identity and replaced it with divinity and humanity.

Isms now spell problems to me. You may go 'spiritualism' and I would just say 'no, it's just spirituality'. But there might be spiritualism to be found there where people go overboard with spirituality. I am a spiritual practitioner because I have developed it and nurtured it. But where there is an ism, I could see something problematic.

People think you don't love your country if you don't know much about history or you don't take much interest in history - it gets worse with people who go: if you're not talking about history, you're burying it and now trying to be a revisionist. If you're not talking about history and you're not angry, you don't love your country. But that's a picture of nationalism for other people that I am getting.

People are using history as something of a chain to hold people imprisoned in the past. It's like an ex-boyfriend who keeps talking about the past, constantly bringing up a thing of history. And yet people also go: Don't judge me according to my past. Don't put me in a box for something that happened in the past. And because from that lens, people could see how history and people getting obsessed with the past could imprison people and keep them from growing and moving forward.

What's the purpose of history? The answer can be found by saying what you don't do with history. You don't live history. That's how you repeat it. That tells people how they didn't learn anything from history. People like talking about nationalism and then reopening wounds, bringing up past mistakes and errors even when they're not already there, it's like reanimating corpses and then it's just a horror fest with ghosts. Nationalism in this case it's not showing love for country, but it is nurturing trauma. It's not even got to healing, it's stuck in victimhood and martyrdom.

If you want love of country, just focus on your humanity. Be a good person. Do things right. But you can't love your country, if you're stuck and stagnating in history.

You're here to create history, not to be stuck in history. You get stuck in history, you are not even living, it's like you're stuck in a ward. You create chaos where there's none. You become paranoid. You live in a ward somewhere. You're living in a different time. You're in jail.

When you're stuck, you don't get to create history. You don't get to improve the quality of community living. Your legacy becomes bad. Why? Because you didn't live your life, you didn't free yourself. When people aren't free themselves, their view of the world will be distorted by that imprisonment. And that's the view of the world they would be sharing like a screen in a Zoom meeting.

Your victory is just waiting for you to get out. Your legacy is just waiting for you to free yourself like a vision of that project. Get out and start building that legacy. Get out and create.

A sad thing for young people is to imprison them young by having them replace their forefathers and having them repeat the same errors and have them inherit trauma. They weren't even alive then. They didn't even live there, they didn't live in that time. But people be like grabbing them and pushing them and locking them up there. These kids haven't even started living yet and they be locking them up - With what? Where? Ideas. In their minds.

Seventeen years old and talks like he's a world war veteran. Paranoia. Seventeen years old and he talks like he left his wife and his kids and because they've been manipulated and tricked to think that that's how they love the country - they go to war and be at war with others who have kids and wives. So there was an error made. There was a mistake. How does history help? Do you repeat it? Do you correct an error by repeating it? Your father left your mother for another woman. History. How does that help you? What was the error? You see the error, you get to end it there. How? Don't repeat it.

Seventeen years old and talks like his wife left him. He doesn't even have a wife. But that's what I am talking about the young being imprisoned young.

If the old wants to make mistakes, let him suffer for it. You suffer for something, you could see eventually how that's a mistake. But the mistake of the father is not the mistake of the kid. Honestly, no father wants the kid to be imprisoned for his own mistakes. So, if you're just looking to show your father you love him, then don't repeat it.

This is breaking generational or ancestral trauma. Which is where history could help with by showing people what the error was so they don't repeat it. What you don't repeat, you change.

But that's what history is good for. You look for the error and make sure you don't repeat it. You don't have to be memorizing dates and names, you just gotta have eye for error. And you don't end up rendering history useless.

History feels like a broken record in the company of people who don't see the error. It goes: Error, error, error. And people be like: In the 18th century.. Okay, class, in what century did blah happen? How about what happened and what the take-away from that is? What happened wrong there? 'Cause that's all history is telling people: Error, don't repeat. Error, change. Error, do the right thing.

People be like: It's 'you're' not 'your', or it's 1815 not 1816, but they don't see manipulation when it happens. They don't see materialism. They don't see the isms and what that's doing. A typo and a grammatical error only hurts people who have some kind of a problem. The isms, this affects community health.

Both can be corrected. The first one is easier to correct. Laugh when you make a typo. A hint: your problem is self-esteem related. If you can't laugh when you make a typo, you have a confidence issue.

You don't repeat history, and history will be happy with you. It will know that you paid attention to what it was telling you. It's not only history that smiles when you listen but your ancestors as well. Take the good with you and nurture it - the errors, you don't repeat, you just do the right thing.

Tarot cards - a legacy from my ancestors, a divination tool, supported me in developing my spirituality. It's not really that hard to know what legacy to nurture. It is what nurtures you.