MANILA, PHILIPPINES. Every week, my chronic jaw pain is always accompanied by dizziness. I will not call it normal headache; it is just a heavy feeling of disorientation that requires me to lie down for hours, sometimes even for one or two days. This incapacitates me to work, think and do anything worthwhile. My body seems to want only one thing – a deep sleep. But the pain and discomfort I am experiencing does not give me a restful sleep rather a gist of restlessness that weakens my body. As such, I am starting to develop a sensitivity to the language of my body as well as the external things happening around my everyday life. Now, I am more sensitive to nature: air, heat, wind, noise, temperature, sound and the types of energies these emit to my being. When one is sick, it helps living with one’s Presence in order to make healing, consciously possible.
I was experiencing my own Now, my Presence, when a tectonic earthquake occurred in Manila last Saturday, September 27, 2008 between 11:04 and 11:09 in the morning. Radio news reported that the magnitude was 5.3 with the intensity between 3 and 4 (I believe at Richter’s scale). The epicentre is 34 kms. North of Mamburao, Mindoro Occidental, down south of Manila, still within Luzon Island. The intensity of this earthquake is relatively weaker compared to the July 16, 1990 earthquake that I personally experienced when I was in high school at Binangonan, Rizal. However, then, I was in our canteen with my friends. But last Saturday, I was alone high in the 27th floor of a condominium unit I am currently renting.
I was having a good chat with my Mama when the earthquake struck. I felt a sudden movement of things around me. The slow, unimpressed motion gusts a disorienting feeling that confused me. Once more, I felt dizzy; that is, the kind of dizziness that is always rendered by my chronic illness. But I am quite sure that it was not my jaw pain that time; it was something external, something outside my weak body; something beyond.
Mama heard my initial reaction, “Diyos ko, lumilindol yata?” (Oh my God, I think there’s an earthquake!) She was quick to calm me and asked if I already had breakfast. I said no and so she insisted that I may just be hungry.
At that moment, I know I was one with nature’s rumblings. I was scared. I felt bad. I felt vulnerable. I felt mortal. I consciously felt the earthquake!
Awareness with one’s body enables a person to commune with nature. This process enables one to distinguish the difference between the illness within and the troubles without. Last Saturday, I realized that when one is sick, it is not all about the personal body that matters; it is also the matter that extends beyond his/her control. There, nothing is sufficient, except change. And change, especially one that is brought about nature, has a funny way of reminding one’s mortality.
