A Nation's Treasures

A Nation's wealth is the life and promise of its people - across all our generations.

My people, as we emerge as a Republic in our ages, before we are burdened more and more with the responsibility of material wealth - I want us to remember the simplicity of our happiness in this picture.

It is commonly said that one ought to find one's happiness before doing anything so that anything one does shall be of good profit to the self. This is true.

But lest the world anymore complicate it, this is true only if one can keep one's happiness in the soul and keep it there - present and abiding as a joy in thy spirit - without anything else.

So that in knowing this, we shall always know, as we together undertake to further progress our journey of Country, Earth from Sky - the bounds of our reach and the reach of our limits - where the freedom of Man ends and the Freedom of God begins.

For our freedoms
shall always be our bounds,
our happiness shall to each of us
always remain within their reach
appearing as limitless to our hearts as the Sky
only as far as their limits are known to us here on Earth -
therefore, to transgress the freedom that keep us real
is to distort the happiness that keep us free -
as the gravity of material things tend to do
to remind us of responsibility.

Let us always remain with the truth - we are a spiritual people and therefore, when it comes to our dream of happiness - simply, a simple people.

Everything we need is within each of us - from this unity, God-helping, we shall confidently build.

Now, let us carry on - into the morrow.

Salaam. Shalom. Peace.
---<--@

We are to be wealthy first before becoming wealthy.

20101109

Simplicity vs. Corruption

The labor of life is a pursuit of happiness.

Now, let it also be said here that this happiness is not so much about addition but subtraction.

For the happiness that the human heart longs for is an immaterial state.

But the spirit of the world would have us believe otherwise. For the spirit of the world is an enemy of truth.

Corruption begins when the lie enters the heart that the end for which our labors upon this earth is intended is a purely material end.

Therefore, all human beings are vulnerable to its allure - young, old, rich, poor. It threatens all and reduces all to emptiness.

Material wealth is a necessary good. But temporal riches are not the ultimate end towards which the fulfillment of life is purposed. It is a means to an end.

In our world, there are those unhappy souls who live in utter desolation in the midst of great material wealth. Those who toil no more for the original purposes through which all men and women are purposed by the LORD to obtain from the one God of all the abundance of heaven on earth.

They labor instead for vain and material ends and reap naught but emptiness and isolation. They have become enslaved by the fickle fashion of fleeting things. They have lost the appetite for the true things of happiness - virtue, light, beauty, peace, family, friendship: God, and Country.

They have become corrupt and eventually, habitually corrupt. They have ceased to be simple like children, young and free.

Hence, corruption is a vice and as thus, is opposed by a virtue.

This virtue is simplicity.

My fellow Filipino compatriots, simplicity is a virtue and as thus, require the grace of God in its operation. And so I should like to illustrate this for us through this brief anecdote:

Freedom Seeking Freedom -

do you like to live simply?

"yes."

no, you don't

if you would like to live simply

when i ask you again

do you like to live simply

you must first learn to answer no

and to humble thyself before our God

say to thy heart that God is and that is all!

and then say to the one LORD of all truth

that you want the answer to be yes

persevering in constant prayer

until you know that you do

for you are by thy seeking sought

... selah

because you sought, o heart

you are found

and you become free to become

thy true self.

---<--@

Virtue is a power to act; a power begun as a choice to cooperate with the Divine will. All that is virtue must proceed after its every realization in the quiet of the heart with God as a free and human act practiced over and over again until its exercise forms in the soul a habit of grace.

Indeed, the battle to end corruption begins and ends again with the self.

A "No" to corruption is a "Yes" to the Republic.

Therefore, if every Filipino would say "No" to corruption even for a day, it is a good start as the solution here belongs to its own exercise.

This exercise of virtue opposing vice may be likened to a new road being laid over the old.

The smoothness of the new means it must extend over the entire length of the old. This means it shall require much time and practice. The more complete the road, the smoother the journey.

The strength of the new road means it must possess (and be possessed of) some depth. This means it shall require much prayer and faith. The deeper its layers, the firmer the road.

Truthfulness or honesty is the foundation of simplicity.

---<--@

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

Love and Truth