Contemplations

Welcome HomeYou have been through aLong journeyYou have crossed theMost difficult terrainsEncountering the violent weatherParched from the dessertHeat from the rainforestYour clothes are drenchedYour skin is dryYour feet full of blistersWelcome homeNow dearTake a restDeep full breathsSip some teaLet’s put a warm blanketaround your bodyYou are hereAt the right placeAnd you are alwaysOn timeIn the StudioIt’s four days left before I take the train on Friday evening to London. Then an early morning flight on Saturday will take me all the way from London to Chicago O’Hare Airport where Brett’s dad will be waiting.We are due to spend less than a day with his parents in the suburb, just outside of Chicago.Then, an early morning drive on Sunday will take back us to Chicago O’Hare Airport again for a flight to San Francisco, where our second hosts, Brett’s brother and wife, will be waiting.That means, by the time you get this message, I will be getting ready to get on my second flight, baggy eyes and all.But look at me. Touring around the United States, kind of. I am happy to be with my American boyfriend, who has family there. It means I have a really good excuse to go back frequently. Experience the City life and immerse myself into a different culture.A time to really get outside of myself to meet reflections of the external world that exist beyond my own.Brett and his presence alone, gets me out of the house. That’s just the kind of person he is. He loves to stay active. He goes on lots of walks. He gets me out of my own world. He is very much a good influence, although the amount of travelling he does gives me FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) sometimes.If you get to know Brett, you would realise how much he loves travelling.When we got together, I very much saw that if there is one thing that gives back to him so much energy and appreciation for being alive in this world- it’s travelling.Since I started pursuing my dreams, I’ve become a messy person.The mess can wait if it means the idea is completed or explored.I don’t do it intentionally. I just seem to forget everything else around me when I really have something I want to focus on.And a week before this trip, I suddenly found myself working on this newsletter, rather than packing.What else is there to do but write, as I felt compelled to do?That is the thing about doing the work.There is no other way around it.The writer must write.The speaker must speak.The artist must draw.The traveller must travel.The identity itself is a label. We just do what must be done.And to give time to what makes us feel alive always has a trade off.For me this week, it’s the lack of sleep.We don’t have graduation in creativity or entrepreneurship.We don’t have right or wrong answers.Artists rarely compete with each other but instead we compete with themselves.And ever since I started asking questions about:* how can I create paintings that resemble the feelings from my heart?* or writing that stirs my soul?* or questions about how I can let go off this idea that to be an artist means we must always act from a place of being wounded, or naive or being too introverted or too extroverted?* and how to just let my expression be as diverse as my interests themselves?Ever since I started asking these kinds of questions, I’ve never been able to look back.I’ve become addicted to learning as an adult.Learning as an adult on the journey of pursuing dreams is like playing a video game.Every level completed gives a boost of confidence that this isn’t so bad after all.That it is possible. I can do it.And the deeper I go, the more I realise perfection is overrated.It prevents one from learning.It prevents one from taking risks and doing things.It prevents one from experimenting.And ultimately, it prevents one from growing and keeping an open mind in life.We try to have everything in order but chaos has been the fundamental birthplace of our solar system.So if you feel like you’re definitely not doing things correctly or that you are making things up in your own life, congratulations.I’ll let you in on a secret. This whole newsletter thing? I don’t have this figured out.But isn’t that how unexpected discoveries happen? You know, the stuff we tell stories about?If you want to hear more about imperfection, I talk about it in this Youtube video. You can find it on the link below:Some housekeeping refreshers:* Firstly, check out this page if you have forgotten who I am.* I am using Substack to publish this newsletter. You will start receiving from right here in your inbox. Alternatively, you can check out Substack website or on the Substack app to read and listen to the full archives.* The audio file is also being broadcasted as a podcast so if you prefer, you can find it and follow on Apple Podcast and also on Spotify.3 things you can do to support my work:With love,Win This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com

Hi friend,After nearly two years of hiatus, I come back to my newsletter Contemplations again.It has been a long time coming and before I tell you about why I had such a long break and what you can expect in your inbox from now on, I want to say:THANK YOU.I am quite sure to bet that your life in the past two years have also been an interesting ride- full of both the ups and the downs, the peace and periods of fast momentum, of growing deeper roots, BUT -You continued to stay subscribed to this newsletter. This act of loyalty and support, I am deeply grateful to you for staying.Where have I been?Shortly after ending last season of newsletter and podcasting, life took an unexpected turn.After some years of persuasion from my sister and I, my mother finally left an abusive relationship with my dad. I experienced a heartbreak unlike any other romantic love encountered so far in witnessing the divorce of my parents in my adult life.My mother moved in with me, taking with her nine cats and a rescued pigeon.It was a steep learning curve to be an independent person, with a life filled with solitude to a life that took a different form ~My boyfriend a few months prior got his visa and he made a big move from the US to the UK to be with me.There we were: 3 humans, 9 cats and 1 pigeon in 1 relatively spacious but now feeling suddenly small, house. You do the math.I won’t bore you with the details. But insert here moments of equal chaos, tears, anguish, confusion, happiness, love and laughter. We all had to grow out of our old skins pretty fast.Where do we go from now?Right in the middle of my parents ongoing divorce, naively or stubbornly or bravely (you decide), I made a decision to begin pursuing my dream of becoming a professional artist poet seriously.I think my parents divorce and the changes I experienced made me realise that this life we have is short. I also no longer had my father’s fear driven thoughts beside me, but instead replaced by my mum’s infinite belief of possibilities.So in the time you didn’t hear from me, I was doing my due diligence and much experimentation and learning to continue to grow as a creative person and as an entrepreneur.This journey of pursuing my dreams have changed me significantly and I have grown much from the woman who started this newsletter back in 2021.Welcome to the Season of ClimbingJust like the seasons of the year, my poetry is linked to the seasons of my life. The previous season I have named Season of Contemplations - a time of deep solitude, questions and searching.I look up at the heights above me and I feel my freedom knowing the winds and the rocky surface Would give me the protection I need on this climb.Now is the Season of Climbing, my friend. A season where we learn to revel in the very real, very practical, very unpredictable path of new beginnings.In this season, we are not just dreaming, but doing.We are not just resting, but resting intentionally to grow deeper roots.We are not in solitude, but very much a part of a family, friends and community.We climb steadily with enjoyment and hope, faith and laughter, and should we also grieve for a past long gone, we grieve with possibilities for a better future, undetermined but very real to us just like the ground beneath our feet.Every Sunday, I will publish a short poem as written and spoken word - just long enough so you can enjoy it while you have a cup of hot drink (or water!) and take a moment of rest from your day.Should it take your fancy, there will also be a short segment where I tell you about my week and what is happening in my studio. I decided to add this to my weekly archive because I think it can be quite comforting to know you are not alone in this climb and journeying along this game of life.I hope we can continue to be on this path of contemplating and growing together.Some housekeeping refreshers:* Firstly, check out this page if you have forgotten who I am.* I am using Substack to publish this newsletter. You will start receiving from right here in your inbox. Alternatively, you can check out Substack website or on the Substack app to read and listen to the full archives.* The audio file is also being broadcasted as a podcast so if you prefer, you can find it and follow on Apple Podcast and also on Spotify.3 things you can do to support my work:With love,Win This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com

Beyond my window Is a whole wide world There are trees swaying in the wind There are birds singing songs The dogs are barking and the cars Are moving along Just as the people who stop and stare Or go about their business to somewhere The sun still shines The neighbour’s cat visits my porch Everyone and everything continues Beyond my window There is a time for everything and today marks my last post of this season, which has unexpectedly lasted for 7months. When I first started this podcast newsletter, I didn’t expect myself to write for this long and consistently every week.Sometimes the process challenged me, but more commonly, I found different ways of experimenting with spoken word, in finding old and new voices both in written and spoken formats, and turning up to a black page; surprising myself of the words that flowed out in front of me.I also deepened some relationships and found a way of connecting with close and new friends, home and abroad. I found that a newsletter is a great way to connect with those far away. My visitation into their emails almost replicated the conversations we have when we are together. I learned from their sharing of their stories just as I shared mine.Just as nature as its own seasons, I think I am also coming to a cycle of rest and renewal.A lot of the poetry I read came from deep moments of rest and renewal. Of disconnecting to connect within and living life in many different ways.It came from writing down my jumbled up thoughts without a form of organisation.I’ve heard from a few people of how the voice I seem to have developed in many of my thinking and writing is of “wisdom.” But I don’t feel wise. I feel like for the past seven months, I’ve merely recorded flashes of insights that I recognise in my own or someone else’s life.Sometimes it is not based on a true story but of a theory. Sometimes it is based on many stories interconnecting with one another.Regardless, I think, for now it is time for me to take a pause. I’ve seen many people take different forms of breaks this summer. I’ve been denying myself of one until now.I am curious to the next stage of how my writing will unfold and how my voice will evolve and in what ways I will use it for.If there is a next season, it will be as purposeful as this one.I hope you will give yourself the permission to rest and unplug. To not just peer outside of your window, as the poem suggests, but to step outside of it. To experience the birds, the trees, the dogs, the cats and the people who are living their own lives, living centrally in their own lives as the main character of their own projects and dramas, as we all do; and recognise that all of this and more awaits for our witnessing of them beyond the windows we have built for ourselves.In the meantime, do go back to the previous episodes and archives of the newsletters and podcast episode. They’re available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and if you are subscribed to this newsletter, it will go straight into your inbox.Thank you for coming on this journey with me for the past seven months. I have really enjoyed writing and recording for you.May we all live by our own wisdom, and for that wisdom to be crumble every once in awhile to be built up again.Contemplations:How will you be pausing this year?What are your favourite ways of disconnecting to connect?In what ways can you learn to pivot in your life so that a renewal can take place? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com

Have you seen a tree that grows to maturity in a day? My mother once told me about spiders building their webs “You didn’t grow up watching spiders so you don’t know,” she would tell me “The spider produces his own web and many times he would lose grip and he would fall again and again He would then climb back up again and again Continuing to construct his intricate web” This is the timeline of nature Where no sequence of our life is constructed in 24 hour blocks There is only wisdom and patience that all things will grow and unfold in their own time There is only the trust and faith that all the nutrients and connections required for survival will be given Far from our own egoic interference We can bear witness to these cycles of natureContemplations:What is your life’s work right now?Where in your life have your sense of time become small? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com

The human journey is a funny phenomenon.There are those who decide early in the beginning that what they perceive to be real is something that only they can see in the physical realm of the senses. They disregard anything that cannot be explained by the logical brain, labelling the ones that talk and speak to the invisible forces as crazy. The crazy people continue to dance to the music only they seem to hear; they continue to speak to the unseen. The crazy people had long been an outcast in much of the history of society- those that did not live up to their parents expectations, of showing fully fledged capabilities because in an already established world, their contribution is not needed nor welcomed. For wild hearts like theirs are a threat to those that made up the rules. And so, to those that decided to abandon their wild hearts from a young age, they continue to ignore a deep part of themselves that wish to scream at the moon and dance to the rhythm of a heart that wish to beat to an irregular rhythm orchestrated by their soul’s expression.There are also those who in the beginning decide to be rid of the material world. It is as though they have been on Earth multiple times before, have seen it all and done it all and now have had enough- enough to wonder why they even came back in the first place. The materialistic society is a trigger for their souls who now yearn to be elsewhere. And so, they seek refuge alone in the caves and mountains, or in some other solitary confinement. Some reject larger societal structures to form ones of their own, building something similar yet different from their humanly counterparts. They too, call the ones embedded in the constructs of the established societies as crazy. The crazy people who continue to go to bed and wake up at the same time, to perform some repetitive routines and willingly give their faith and time away to a bigger entity of corporations. And so, these wild hearts end up being blind to the mirroring essence of their lives with the ones in monotony- that their choice to repetitively chop wood in the mountains or clear the dead wood from the forest before the summer comes is no different to the ones that decide to do it in a different way.The polarising choices demonstrated by humans embarking on their own journeys in both extremes are often both sides of the same coin.Free will is evident throughout the human journey. For every choice a human being makes, there lies a basic human need to fulfil something, coupled with an essence of being. Choice is a word diluted in today’s society for one’s choice is always influenced by the past, the present and the future. If an undesired occurrence happened in one’s life, would you accept choice or would you turn to blame, anger and regret, feeling victimised instead of empowered, regardless of the seemingly positive or negative outcome?And there are those of us who have souls that are always trying to balance the two extremities. In between our wild hearts and the need for regularity in a wider society, we rest in between rebellion to our ideals and belonging to the society at large. Abandonment to both is not possible for our love for humanity is wide and expansive. Denying one is to deny a part of ourselves and that only cause us an ache of longing. As if our souls are somehow trying to find the balance in the ebb and flow of the two extremities, we forever question if we are doing the right thing. How do we accept both life and death in our human journey? Do we concentrate more on the seen or the unseen? What is of most importance - which side is right? How do we balance both - if neither is right?A day in our lives are filled with opportunities to both enjoy and be of service. There certainly are growing pains as we deny the responsibilities of such a life. What is a responsibility if not a choice that aligns with our intention? We have been given these bodies, these minds and these hearts - all like soldiers ready for the battle, they are here to use all their mighty powers for this human life. They are ready for your command my dear - what will you do with such powers? Surely a life of responsibility taken under our wings, of imagination and dreams chased to our limited and limitless borders are better than a soul that has decided to resign in weariness before they have even begun.It is possible to go about our ways of the world with all our sensory windows open, so much so that to the outside world, we are completely absorbed and deep amongst our ventures. Yet, to their disillusion, we have in our mind’s eye our faithfulness to the very connection of the unseen beyond, which made it possible for us to be here.And so, we do it over and over again. Giving ourselves completely into this world yet never being unfaithful to the unseen, with a knowing of where we came from and when we will go back. That when it is time for us to go back, to which none of us knows for no one arrives on Earth with a death certificate in hand. When it is time, we go with no regrets. In the end there should be no regrets regardless of what happened in our lives. Practice giving compassion to yourself dear right now, so you will be able to leave with no regrets, no what ifs, no how comes, no who may…In those precious few seconds left, we give merits to the good things we have done and we leave in celebration.And until then, we rise out of bed, we move in repetitive motions, we surprise ourselves in our humanness, we sink back into our beds and do it all - again and again and again.Contemplations:In the season of summer, what has been dawning on you recently about the world? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com

Love is forever a mystery to those that do not let her in. To those with thick skins and walls built up, high enough to suffocate themselves with their own air, love is fickle and too weak. They see another soul as an obstacle, in the way of the plans they have made. When Love suddenly puts another soul in their path, they think she is mocking them. “I will show Love!” They say, as though Love is yet another obstacle course to climb over and afterwards to gloat at how strong they have been, in no recognition of the fact that Love is here for their freedom.Something mysterious happens when two souls collide. If you or I predicted, prior to the collision, of the possibilities of the chemical reactions, if we were both even the Sadhus who could read minds, we would be wrong. In between karma and free will, the collision of these souls create a reflection of a random kind of divinity, a separate entity, based on the original two sources. One plus one equals one. Nothing is taken away nor divided. All stays as one. All becomes the unified one.Stories about perfection has been told about Love but she laughs at human’s idealistic nature because she is anything but perfect. Lies have been told about Love’s happily ever afters but she laughs at their lack of vocabulary because she looks for expansion and not happiness.Those that begin to shave off the excess skin, now becoming dry and hard to achieve by hand; those that begin to hammer down the walls they have built to keep Love away, they find themselves in a mess. The hard skin once removed leaves blotches of uneven holes in one’s flesh. The hammering scatters dust and broken bricks all over their environment, making them cough and forcing them to squint.For those with no thick skin nor high walls to begin with, Love is ready for them but she hardly finds such souls wandering around. For on Earth, many have been left to fend in the world without Love. If something were to happen, they are quick to betray Love and turn away.For those who see Love as merely a beautiful piece of clothing to dress over or a piece of jewellery to be embellished on their bodies, they are fooled. For in such circumstances, Love sees through their tricks and she does not even visit the temples they have built and adorned.But for those who value depth over distance, Love visits their messy homes and patchy bodies. Love comes near them and asks over and over if she really matters to them. In amongst their growing pains, Love never leaves their side.So my dear, do not worry about holding space, do not worry about being ready, do not worry about your consistency of your capacity for Love, do not worry about balancing your time with his, do not worry about sustaining the both of you.Start taking down the walls you had built. Start scratching away the old scabs of skin. Every once in awhile, let him hammer down some of the walls and peel away the hardy skin. Stay curious about the entity that grows from the two of you.Love herself is curious for the growth of this child. She doesn’t know how the child will evolve but every time you choose Love, you give this child a chance to grow. Many have given up on the children of Love, turning their backs, the children starve for Love until they all disappear into the abyss.This is the birth of Love and she will never leave your side. She is watching her child, smiling at her child, silently nudging at her child whilst it goes through its growing pains.Let’s give this child a chance my dear. Let’s see how the child will show up and grow up in this world.Contemplations:Have you welcomed Love in your home lately? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com

“Let’s try to figure everything out,” says the brain Yet the sustenance of the journey lies in the joy of the heart The object of life is joy Spontaneous and ever present to the unfoldment of surprises As the brain gauges on the desire the destination with a scalpel the object of desire flees Whilst the heart nurtures what’s truly meant to be revealedThere is a poem that friends of mine introduced me to a year ago. It goes like this…If you put your nose to the grindstone rough, And keep it down there long enough, You will soon conclude that there are no such things, As a brook that babbles or a bird that sings. These three things will your world compose: Just you, the stone, And your ground-down nose.Sometimes when we look at something too closely, we do not see things properly. Sometimes when we act on something for too long, doing nothing else, we may forget our intention on the act itself, of why we started doing this thing in the first place, or, worse yet, we may not act with the right pace or fulfil it in the best possible way.I think our noses can become too close to the grindstone when we are emotionally connected to something, or when we want something so badly- that the act itself makes us succumb to the motions or obsession.Obsession is not a bad feeling. I think obsession is a derivative of passion. But at what cost when we cannot think, see or act for anything else but that very thing, metaphorically speaking, that very stone, to which we seem to be grinding?I am an obsessively passionate person myself. I found myself repeating to others that, “I don’t like it when I get too obsessed.” This phrase comes out often when I am working on something I love to do. I find myself gripped with a constant call to come back to the space over and over again in body, in mind and soul, in acts of creation. For example, lately, I found myself become passionately gripped to complete a website design for the company I work in.Whatever I get into, I cannot help but get gripped by obsession.And don’t get me wrong, I love this kind of obsession. It gives me a window into my heart of what it is that excites me and what it is that I am willing to put my energy into. As human beings, we have bodies that are here, I believe, to be used- to move, to explore, to connect, to love, and so on…just like the animals that flow with motion everyday in the world in which they belong, we, as humans also belong here. And thus, we will each have something to where our deliberate action will take our noses close to the grindstone.It may not even be as obvious as our area of work; although for most of us that may be the case. It may be in certain activities or in other areas of our lives such as friendships and relationships, where we are passionately obsessed. It may be tied to a particular issue we are dealing with. It may be to the act of constant partying even! Perhaps a person? You get the gist.It is not the act itself but you can trace your proximity to your grindstone from the very feeling of being suddenly gripped into a relentless mixture that could only be described as if gods and goddesses of passion and obsession themselves would meet. Heart and body locked in the act of making love constantly; a certain singularity of motion, of rhythm and focus with every second, turning into minutes, hours, days and weeks.For the passion, there is an orgasmic feeling- a high of some sort. For the obsession, there is a certain kind of stickiness that is addicted to this high- with it comes the need to become constantly bounded.In this kind of space, with our noses close to the grindstones, we are “productive” in the most modern meaning of the word: we produce a lot.But we neglect the very ground upon which we stand, the earth that we inhabit, the galaxy upon which we are spinning along to. We neglect the people who live with us on this earth, the countless numbers of living things within this galaxy. And somehow, we also neglect our right to fully belong in this world.If our passionate obsession is our work and our projects, we forget to see how our work is meeting the world: is it even meeting the world? Are we seeing even the tiniest amount of impact that we are making, or the value that we are giving? If our passionate obsession is a person, we forget their humanness Whether we love them dearly or are angry with them, we forget their humanness, much like ours.Upon realising our close proximity to the grindstone in front of us, it may seem hard to drop the stone that has been held so tightly. To let it rest. To give it some space for awhile.If we loosen our grip, fear assumes us as though our very own grip on the stone is what is making it a stone itself. When in fact, we are merely shaping it, moulding it, transforming it with our very own essence, like a magician.This very grip makes us feel less of a magician however and more like a used up, worn out rag.* To give space to our grindstone is to allow for inspiration to come- for an external source to touch this space we have occupied for so long, we must be brave to put it down, so that we can see the magic again. More often not in the stone itself but in us.* To give space is surrendering towards destiny- towards newness and voice from an unknown source and higher power.My mother always used to repeat something to my sister and I when we were young. Of course, for us, the passionately obsessive thing was to get good grades in our exams. Perhaps from our own will and theirs, we were gripped to this very thing from which our entire future (back then) seem to depend upon.And as we studied and prayed to the higher powers and to Buddha, my mother, when she saw us praying several times in the prayer room, would repeat to us, “Remember, it is not just in your own doing. You may pray a lot for this but you will also have to do the work.”And when the days of our exams came, she would say, “You have done the work, all you can do now is relax, do the exam and the higher powers will be looking out for you.”Do you see what I am seeing? There was a certain kind of emptiness that we inhabited in between our studying. It was a space filled with a sense of faith and trust that allowed for the goodness to exist in our lives. Our bodies were not merely machines. We surrendered our brains every once in awhile to come into this space of trusting in something outside of our will and our doing and with faith that this something will look out for us.* To give space to our grindstone is to accept the complexities in life and to the very groundlessness and uncertainties that our human life may be subjected to every once in awhile. Everything is in rhythm. There is not just one particular kind of rhythm in life. Melodies come in many forms and different melodies contribute to our life. Sometimes life happens, something unplanned, something unexpected and in these times, we are gently or sometimes very quickly nudged into other things that need our attention. Such occurrences can sometimes be our blessing. And in these times, it may not be so sensible to keep grinding on our stone too closely.As I have grown, I am still praying- to the higher powers and to the Buddha. But I have also been finding out that walking helps me have space between the grindstone and I. I was introduced to walking when I studied Landscape Architecture in my University. We walked everywhere and these three years of my undergraduate were where I came out of my shell and found a sense of identity, as I walked. And I fell in love with the act of walking endlessly and with nature.My work and passions these days involve a lot of time spent in front of the computer, on an iPad or being inside. So lately I have not been able to spend a lot of time outside but I have been intentionally using walking as a form of creating space- to help me expand; to help me not think about several things; to see clearly what is in front of me.Something special happens in the act of walking in silence. We observe- we look around. Things become simplified. A bird is a bird. A tree is a tree. A boat is a boat. And we are human. Our bodies find a place in this world, larger than our comprehension but comprehensible to this immediate environment, we feel both large and small. We feel a sense of belonging. And most importantly, we don’t think too much. Our bodies have the time to rest, to finally sigh loudly and take a full breath of air.A friend of mine, when I asked her about her peaceful nature, said to me, “It has been an act of practice!” I was surprised. From being with her, I would have said this peace was her second nature! “I deliberately do things that rest my brain. So I’m not constantly thinking,” she explained.And I think we all need such a space. Even for a brief moment- from the grindstone to which our noses are close to. To hear a brook babbling and to hear the birds singing.In this moment of deliberate action, of choosing to drop our grindstones momentarily, we make a discovery that may shape it to a higher quality.We can be passionately obsessive. That is what allows us to express our uniqueness. I love people that are passionate about things in life. In fact, many of the people I look up to and enjoy the company of, are those that have created a binding stickiness to a particular kind of thing that they have nurtured and have come back to- again and again- and have allowed for that thing to grow now in a particular quality that is timeless. A distinctive signature if you will that can only be cultivated by being involved in such a passionate and obsessive act.Being passionately obsessive also means we find out what commitment feels like, no matter the duration of the time, even for a brief moment. We are not just doing things for the sake of doing things, although that is also important. We act with heart and intention. We use our minds clearly and with direction.But every once in awhile, I think we all owe it to ourselves to leave some space

The Poet The rhythm of the footsteps Nor the chatter will not Shake her now The steady beat of the kora Invites the words to string into sentences The warm drink is Her safety blanket When her mind is empty The food is a source of nourishment For her body A comfort and a luxury To afford the inner kind of nourishment That a regular landing of the page brings She is slowly becoming a part of the furniture In this busy cafe To be hardened by practice To be broken and built up by The admission of herself There is a poet in the cafe Now she is finally writing She has already arrived She is finally writingI actually don’t know the first time I wrote poetry. I can only trace it back to a written poem I have in a book. When I went on a study abroad trip to the US for a semester back in 2013, someone gave me a present as part of a Secret Santa we were doing before Christmas. For my gift, I received a small square book. It had a soft blue cover to the front and back. Indented to the blue was a series of words repeating the same thing: “write.” So if you look at the cover, all it had was a series of “write, write, write, write, write….” And on the first page of the book, my secret Santa had also written:For all the places you’ll goFor all the people you’ll meetFor all the sights, sounds and feelsA place to forever store themI never wrote in that book until January 2017. It was a love poem.A few years forward, when I really began to have a regular practice of writing poetry, I realised how healing it was. What began as a way of expressing pain and confusion, turned into a myriad of poems talking about power and love. What continued were poems about having faith, trust and surrendering to the mysteries of life.The more I wrote, the more my mind opened. I could not un-do what happened. Soon enough I realised that the words I was writing down had power themselves. I realised that every word I wrote could not only be used as a way of acknowledging my experiences, but also they are influential in how I perceived my reality.If I wrote a word that did not hold the vastness of my experience, it didn’t feel right. This is because the page isn’t a person to whom I have a prior relationship with or a person with whom I felt all kinds of obligations. The page wasn’t a person I was trying to impress. I had only myself to answer to on the page. And if I wrote something that didn’t feel quite right, I knew it.Therefore, I had to be honest with myself. And the page forced me to be honest. It taught me to think wider and bigger.I also started to observe how my poems had an effect on me. Every word I used was an opportunity to either contract or expand. If I wrote a sad poem, it was intentional so I could allow feelings of pain to flow through me. But I couldn’t end it there because I didn’t want to feel sad forever.Therefore I would then write another poem. One of courage and understanding. One of holding the bigger questions to life’s humanly experiences; of both limitations and possibilities.I knew that with every word I used, the power was in the tip of my pen to transform my perspective of the experience. I also realised that if I was feeling a certain way in life, I could not just think from a bias perspective.The rhyming words, the vocabulary, the structure of the poem questioned me to think bigger, to dream bigger, to feel bigger. I had realisations such as this one:“That if I had a particular way of experiencing and feeling and doing things in life, then the opposite way of experiencing, feeling and doing things must also be equally true.”Very simple but for me, it was profound. It meant that if I was feeling negative about something, I couldn’t deny in my mind that the opposite must also be equally true- that a positive or even a peaceful outlook was possible, and equally real.At present, I am also shifting into something similar but slightly different. I spent the past few years writing about me. My life experiences, my emotions, my learnings. And somehow this is translating into my understanding of others.I am currently writing a book named, “The Faces We Hold and The Faces We Meet.” The book in itself is accidental- both in theme and name. However, it came about from realising that suddenly, I was not just observing myself but others around me.My close friends, my family members, even the strangers I meet! And there on the page, I write to capture a particular essence I observe, feel and meet. I capture a particular essence of who they are and sometimes also the entirety of who I feel and observe they seem to be.Of course, like with all art forms, everything is subjective. But like a photographer taking a snapshot of a moment, I write a poem to capture the moments of loved ones and strangers.Just as writing poetry taught me to see bigger, it is teaching me of the similarities in us all. Perhaps, more so than the differences. I see that, in a poem I write about my friend, my mother or a stranger, there lies an aspect in me that is the same, if not similar. I have met this particular “face” before and it is from this place that I write- both in observation and in intuition. This poetry is allowing me to understand people. Perhaps even people that I find unpleasant. Simply because I know from my past years of writing that a particular capture is also not the entirety of their character and essence.Last week, I wrote a newsletter about “The Selves We Meet” Coincidently, even before a friend of mine knew about my topic of choice and even before my understanding became whole, about why I wrote what I wrote, she came to visit me and we had a great conversation about this very topic.We shared honestly, as honest as I am to the page, about the pieces of ourselves that we find are opposite. Pieces that serve us in different ways but yet somehow we feel the struggle to unify, to strengthen a weaker characteristic and to stabilise our default thinking and behaviour. Something that served as a tug of war inside us.Suddenly, out of my friends mouth came this phrase that was so very enlightening, “I would call it the tug of peace.” And, right there and then, in that moment, instantaneously, my experience to my many selves came to a halt. There, indeed, was nothing but a feeling of understanding- of peace. Right there, in that moment, all I felt was perfection. Both in myself and in her.  My relationship to myself changed. Right there, I realised that she indeed was perfect as she is. All was happening at the right time. She was unfolding, growing and evolving perfectly, like the perfectly sinuous lines of a drawing. And I also came to know that, indeed, so was I.This is how powerful language and words are. Turning to the page is spending time with ourselves and I am learning that in a world like ours, where we can give ourselves over to many external musings, poetry and art is where I converse with myself- the parts of me that I know and the parts of me that I do not yet know but am willing to take the time to find out. In turn, I create a belonging in this world that expand my perspective of this life and the people that inhabit this world. Everything is perfect. And there is a part to everyone, despite the seemingly chaotic mannerisms and their doing, is indeed perfect.Contemplations:How are you using language in your life?What practices allow you to connect with yourself?What is allowing you to have a bigger perspective and understanding of our human experience? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com

The Face to be Found What to do to be me Somedays I am wise Somedays I am a child Somedays I feel like a fully fledged woman Whatever that means Somedays I am nowhere to be found Somedays all I want to do is hide Somedays you cannot shut me up Somedays I just want to spread all the love I feel in my heart Somedays I want to protect the underdog Somedays I want to just let it be Trusting that there must be someone greater than me Doing their job Somedays I am the monks from the monastery Somedays I am my immigrant family back in My imaginary childhood home Somedays I am the new friends I’ve met When I was all on my own Who am I when I am so changeable Let me know if you can find me I’ve stopped counting the many selves I’ve found Is it cliche to say the journey is in the discovery? Because that way I can really be at peace Without pretending that I have met The real or better me But…somedays I do pretend to be cool When really I am a bit eccentric but Trying hard to seem “normal” Somedays I don’t catch myself doing all of this I’ve lost sleep over meeting my countless selves To see them come and go What to do to be me When I am the accumulation Of the people and experiences in my life I no longer grasp and I no longer hide Because something’s got to give! The Presence I am alone in the moments When I am both near the truest thing That nourish me from the inside Where does this self go When I am not meeting them In the water On a mountain On a canvas In front of a blank page Where does this self go When I am too busy And momentum strikes in my life With things and people to attend to Yet, When it all falls away And my responsibilities have disappeared It comes back again Quiet and tempting When I think this self has left me forever When I think I have betrayed myself I meet them Once again In the water On a mountain On a canvas In front of a blank page Patient and loyal as ever I am here I am home To this self I will always be knownI once heard the poet David Whyte say that the phrase, “Be Yourself” is the least helpful thing you can say to a person.The first poem you heard is talking about the struggle of meeting our true selves. In my opinion, due to our struggle and our need to fit in, sometimes we find ourselves being anything but ourselves. It is the very essence of human nature that our environment, including the places and the people to whom we are surrounded by, makes up a large proportion of who we are and who we become.No matter our age, I am certain that at some point in our lives, we were uncertain about who exactly inhabited this body of ours. As a twenty nine year old, let me also add that my twenties have been about finding who I thought was “myself” to lose it all again and feel uncertain and unable to hold any ground of self assuredness. Is self assuredness even the ground that we should seek to be standing on?The second poem talks about when we first come to meet this self in a real way. We are lucky if we can find a place that allows this self to come out into the world and be met by us and by others.In my opinion, this is normally stimulated by some kind of activity. An activity that brings us into the the moment and somehow, we feel like “ourselves.” Somehow, in this space, all the masks, the effort, the many faces fall away and we are met with something that feels eternal. It is not a jumpy kind of feeling. It is highly intuitive, it is present and in flow, it is everything and nothing at once.I meet this self when I am painting. I find all the barriers or pretence drop away when the paint brush touches the blank wall and I am fully present. I also meet this self, in a slightly different way when I am writing. On a blank page, I am honest with myself. In both times, the voice I hear back and intuit is accepting. It tells me that all is as it should be. It shows me the bigger picture of life. And lately, I have also been meeting this self when I am in front of the prayer table. Looking into the eyes of the Buddha whilst muttering the prayers on the mala beads, I feel an immense amount of love.I know that in my sister’s case, this is when she is outdoors and doing active things, activities like being in the water surfing or figuring out a route to climb on a climbing wall.We are lucky if we can find this presence. It is a self that nourishes us deeply, and I believe that we don’t have to do a particular kind of activity to meet this presence. It is always there but having activities that nourish is in our lives helps us to get in touch with that presence more so. But, there also comes a point in our lives where we also meet another self. A self that gives and offers to others. After all, we are living a human life and part of what every one of us as human beings go through is our need to find “ourselves” but also to translate that in a way that is most authentic and honest to the external world.Let me tell you that this isn’t always easy! We are not only up against many voices, but I think especially at this day and age with our strong presence on social media, we have a challenge of portraying this honesty and authenticity to our digital faces as well. And let me tell you that this isn’t always easy!The question I currently hold in my life, perhaps the biggest and most mysterious of all questions I have had so far to date, is how my face meets the world. In finding art, in finding painting and poetry, I now seek to give and offer from this space of nourishment to others.I think this self, the self that we meet in activities that nourish us, feeds into our giving and offering for others externally. But the funny thing is that, right now, I am realising that we don’t have to make them identical.Someone recently told me that, as artists, we see ourselves synonymously with our art.That means, if a part of us feel shy or wants to hide, our giving (of art) hides along with this self. If a part of us is critical or doubtful, our giving (of art) remains in the space of uncertainty.But we can give and share in a different way to what nourishes us without losing a sense of nourishment. What nourishes us can still be present but we can allow it to have a bit of a breathing space so that this nourishment has the opportunity to meet another- be it an environment or a person.I think that this is very relevant for artists to contemplate on, as I am recently doing so myself. This is deep I know. I am still peeling the layers of this realisation as well.The main thing is the space we can leave when our “being ourselves” meet the external world. For artists, I guess this will be the space we allow to exist so that our artwork is not just a form of our own nourishment but something we practice so that we can give it to someone else, so they can feel the kind of nourishment we feel. But that form of giving can look even so slightly different than what we imagine or think it should be. Because what nourishes all of us will vary.  It can look similar but different- the same sense of nourishment can still be there regardless of the form it takes.In this way, we are accepting ourselves. We are also giving and offering from a space of nourishment from within and with love.This also means that we can use our humanly bodies and minds and work with our souls to create our livelihoods and an exchange of energy. That is important as a human being. We are always finding ways to self-actualise; to exert our energy into what is meaningful for us.So to conclude this rather contemplative and personally insightful topic, I hope, that no matter the faces you meet this week, you find the things that nourish you. I hope you can also reveal this nourished self in a form that truly gives, offers and nourishes another without being dishonest or harsh to the soul inside.Contemplations:What nourishes you?How do you nourish others? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com

Why not dream and dance? Why not walk the paths and tracks unmade? Why not wander in mind in the opposite direction? Why not? Why not choose to express your individuality? Why not be weird and unconforming? Why not create something new? Why not? This world has seen too many copies Our souls have been tightly packed into neat cardboard boxes Of niceties and politeness Long enough We have betrayed ourselves Long enough When our brothers and sisters Who have gone too far To know the whispers of their soul Much like ourselves When they Wrapped in brown tape and sticky labels above their hearts When they Speak in fear and doubt Be the one to rise up Break free of the stickiness that bind you Look into their eyes Bravely, tender, powerfully And ask, “Why not?”The world needs stronger artists. The world needs more of us to act with courage.What happens to us when we see a piece of art?Most of us are sensitive to aesthetically beautiful things. Sometimes, for some of us, a piece of art brings a sense of pure bliss and peace.For some of us, it might bring a strong sense of disgust. And for others? Confusion or blankness, they might say, “What is this about huh?”Nevertheless, there is a reaction. Art evokes a reaction out of us all. This kind of reaction begins with the art interacting with an inner part of us, no matter how bland or strong in emotion, before we, as an audience, even in a split second or sometimes many minutes more, begin to try to articulate it to another of what we are feeling in the presence of this art.Sometimes, that piece of art cannot even be properly described.Art and creativity transcends language. It cuts right to the chase, even when art involves using words.Now, imagine a world without creativity. There would be no new ideas. There would be no innovations. There would be no surprise.Imagine a world without creatives, a world without artists. We would all be asleep. There would be no revolutions. There would be no rebellion. There would be no magic.We live in a world that celebrates and fears uniqueness at the same time. Both within us and within others. When we see someone who dare to walk in a slightly different way than the rest of us- perhaps they are hopping on one foot as they walk, just because- we may either call them a genius or “good for them!” Or point and laugh and say that is the stupidest thing we have ever seen.But that is what artists do.We create. We have no other option but to create.And I’m not talking just about the traditional kind of art and artists. I’m talking about those amongst us who dare to envision something they want to bring to the rest of us, perhaps something that has never been done before - and really really try to see that into fruition.I’m also talking about those amongst us, who perhaps through a series of trials and tribulations or even from a young age, know that they are here to live a life they want to live. And with that in mind, they will go about to see that into fruition.In both circumstances, there are no kind of inhibitions; these artists, these creatives are unapologetically themselves.It takes courage. A whole ton of bravery. This kind of act is a battle against our inner selves, a child within who is prone to easily be wounded, against the big wide world outside.I wrote this poem about a year ago when I found a place within me that was a creator; an artist. Both in the literal sense and in a soulful sense. I found a place within that was more than just Win, who had a body and walked and talked.This part of myself was powerful and unique. And I wanted to be in touch with that part of me forever.Remember earlier, when I was talking about the artists and creators who are unapologetically themselves? The ones who may decide to hop on one foot to walk, just because?Well, in turns out that for the majority of us, that kind of daringly wild expression is a process.There is an ebb and flow to this kind of remembrance and I most find it when I am in the act of creation- when I am painting or writing or developing new ideas.There is a process to this kind of remembrance because first, we find it in ourselves. In the beginning, it’s like a little secret that we keep within. A shock to our system. Especially when we have lived a certain way for so long. We dare not to let this self out for the fear of judgement or confused yet- how do we even begin to show and articulate this to the people around us?Our relationship to the artist and creator within is a process indeed, even for the most confident of us.That’s why, more and more I am finding the value of the work I put out into the world. Sometimes, just the fact that I am painting means I am shifting the system, both internally within myself and externally in this world.I am shifting the system because in that space of creating a piece of magic I sense from within, and realising that it is magic, I am no longer in a space of fear, doubt or anxiety. I am present. I am using my body. I am creating.I do believe that we all have the capability of using our bodies and minds in many unique ways, that are true for ourselves. But to express that externally and to be seen, to dare to walk the paths unmade and in a direction we see for us, requires total bravery and courage.As artists and creators, we may be courageous to do the work but wild and tender hearts and all, we ought to exercise our hearts as a muscle when we choose to let ourselves be seen and heard. Especially if you are pulling out something vulnerable and intrinsic to you. Let’s say if we do decide to hop on one foot suddenly and decide that is the way we will walk, no matter the kind of reception we get, we must keep on walking.What I’m trying to say is that our work is precious. And it is magical. It is worth sharing. It is worth expressing.Who else will know you more than you know yourself?Who else can show up for your work if you don’t show up for yourself?Who else will stick up for you, if you don’t stick up for yourself and your magical work?Who knows what kind of container such an expression of ours will be held in. The container will ebb and flow as we honour ourselves and our work more.Have I said that it requires total bravery and courage?But we also don’t need to be precious with it. Whilst we wait perhaps for a response from a publisher about our book or whilst we wait for people to enrol into our course or whilst we grow our audience, we keep creating. We keep doing the work. We keep sticking up for ourselves.Because our well of creation is not limitless. It is a deep and infinite black hole where all kinds of things are waiting to emerge.We may start with one thing and end up with a completely different thing. Our ideas may look crazy to us in the beginning as well but as we follow the depths of our intuition, it may be what needs to come out at this day and age. Perhaps in a different container to what we thought we needed.Give it all a chance. Give yourself the chance. Give your work a chance.The world needs stronger artists. The world needs more creators.Contemplations:Where in your life are you playing small and safe?How do you want to express your uniqueness?What do you want to say right now to the world? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com

With every step we take We are evolving And unfolding Shedding our old skins No longer akin Leaving what has been With a grin To continually begin Again We are not aspiring About what we will Become Because we come to be At peace With the piece Of ourselves That no longer fit In a box We dance to the beat Of the drums only we can hear Is anyone giving us a cheer? Who knows?! We continue to grow Regardless Of the heartless The hardship The darkness We harness As the fuel For our fire We will not tire Until we meet death And take our final breathRecently I’ve been contemplating on new beginnings.For some of us, we leave the place or the space we are currently inhabiting out of boredom or a lack of challenge, or simply from the desire to experience something entirely new. It is driven out of every human being’s need to grow and to evolve in life. We have been explorers throughout many years and in the years to come, as a human race, we will continue to explore- past the point of our comfort zones and for the anticipation of receiving a sense of instant gratification and a continual sense of renewal.But what if our current situation was completely fine? What if both on the outside and the inside, we lived a picture perfect life; a life parallel to the greatest dream we have ever had?I watched a video today of Thomas from Yes Theory, a group who in the world of Youtube, taught me to seek discomfort in all areas of my life. He spoke on the camera about being in such a dream and how, after living, travelling and telling stories for the past seven years with his best friends and building a global community, he felt lost in life. How, suddenly, he hit a phase of depression and “slowly living as a shadow” of himself.Now this isn’t a story about depression or feeling lost but I think at some point in our lives, we have all felt something similar. At least, at some point in our lives, we have felt the groundless surface beneath us with no glaringly obvious directions intuited from the part of us that have always seemed so sure of what we wanted in life and the path we were heading towards.Thomas’s story have taught me that no matter where we are in life, no matter how old and how far along you are in your personal journey; no matter how it all looks from the external world of how we have it all together, there is no telling when this sense of groundlessness will come.And the point that we all eventually want to know is also that there is no telling when this form of a new beginning will take shape. But before a form even begins to take shape, I think that in the moments between new beginnings, we are internally resting and wrestling with our desire to stay or to go. To stay in our present space and place or to go.I think this kind of space in between is worth noting, worth observing and worth honouring. I think these decisions are never easy. Our decisions are layered with inner and outer expectations that come from ourselves, the people around us and our wider community and perhaps even the whole society at large. They are layered with our fears and doubt; hope and faith, and everything in between.Rest assured, however, that we do not need to move so quickly. In this space, we can take our time.Something that I continue to learn about resting in the in between moments of new beginnings is to first of all be kind. Be kind to the part of us that wants to go. Be kind to the part of us that is intuiting something that we may not see in full light and clarity at the present moment.If this part of us feel irrational to our rational minds that we are leaving something good behind, we can take the time in between new beginnings to mourn in advance for the places, the spaces and the people that we may be leaving behind. To tell you the truth, the people in our lives may be living their own dreams or their own ideas of a life well-lived. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t follow our own path and live out our own expression.As we honour the choices that are taking root, we can both celebrate and mourn for a time passing. I think such in between moments of new beginnings are so precious. It teaches us of how fleeting life is. Especially if we, as an astrologer once said to me, decide to “choose our own adventure novel.” Especially if we, as he also said, “live out many lives in one.”Above all, I think we are not alone. We all go through many thresholds of new beginnings throughout our lifetimes. Some more obvious as rites of passages than others.Whether you are about to take a leap of faith in a new beginning or in between the space you are inhabiting now and the new one that is appearing in front of your eyes, I hope you can be brave. I hope that you can walk with faith in what is to be revealed in time. I hope that you can trust your heart to even the most irrational decisions. I hope that you know you will make it, in whatever way you choose to define “making it.”Contemplations:Are you in between new beginnings?Or are you intuiting a new beginning for yourself?What are you resting and wrestling with internally for journeying towards a new path? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com

Let’s expand our sense of time so we don’t think in seconds but in hours not in hours but in days not in days but in months not in months but in a decade not in a decade but a lifetime not in a lifetime but in infinity Anything of quality takes more time to build than the sudden flash of the ignited dreams and passionsThere is a theme that has been cropping up lately. Whether it be to do with my own life or that of those around me, I am seeing the patterns very clearly of how we as human beings do fall down the route of instant gratification, aka in the simplest of terms, our need to get a quick fix.The stars must have aligned, alongside the planets, in some way shape or form. I have felt both the pressure and the solutions that come from the limitations in life that perhaps happen for the good.Whether we are facing a physical or mental pain, or a huge longing in our lives, sometimes life answers back to us in indirect and roundabout ways. With certain pains and longings, there is an intensity that makes us want to both jump into the experience wholeheartedly and to be able to withstand it long enough to conquer it, or we simply wish to get our things and pack up our bags in the direction we came from. Perhaps to how it once was. Perhaps to a time when it was good and we had it all figured out.But things in life are never that straight forward. Standing in front of this metaphorical mountain we must climb, sometimes we do not have a choice. A situation presents itself where the only direction to go is forward and make that climb. Sometimes, the lack of choice such cases is not because we cannot go back in the direction we came from. Sometimes, we know that our growth will come from experiencing the journey of a forward momentum- where what lies ahead is an unknown mystery but we feel we have to go on. We feel that we have to come out of our protective shell or passivity and meet another part of ourself that we long to see.For that, as with many of the greatest challenges in our lives, the journey upwards is long and the path will test and surprise us multiple times. We are forced to think long term and to play the long game.So, just like the newsletter “To Rest,” where I explored what it meant to really rest in our modern day society, I am exploring below what it means to play the long game.So what does it mean to play the long game?* To play the long game is not to focus on instant gratification that may come with quick results. Meanwhile, we can still allow ourselves to celebrate the small wins along the way.* To play the long game is to recognise that the small wins are the large wins, because it is the accumulation of the small efforts and outcomes that actually make up what seems like one large accomplishment.* To play the long game is to develop our resilience. This is our ability to weather through the challenges that we may meet along the way.* To play the long game is to develop a sense of curiosity for the unknown and to not give into any fearful or nervous tensions that we feel when facing the unknown.* To play the long game is to embrace the possibilities, in ourselves and about our outer circumstances.* To play the long game is to cultivate a multitude of patience and acceptance within ourselves and for the people journeying with us. Should this fail, to re-gather and meet with patience and acceptance, again and again and again.* To play the long game is to think long term.* To play the long game is not to judge ourselves by the day, nor by our current inability to yet meet the vision we hold.* To play the long game is to infuse all that we do with energy and intention.* To play the long game is to be decisive in our actions, recognising that life is a game of choices.* To play the long game is to save and invest on what matters.* To play the long game is to recognise that little things do add up.* To play the long game is to believe in ourselves, our capabilities, our way of living and being in the world, our gifts and our offerings and our capacity to love again and again and again.Contemplations:What are some of the long games that you are playing in your life?Which area of your life is testing you to think long term?What do you think it means to play the long game? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com

We should tend to the things close to our heart Animals, plants People Dreams Our well-being Even if it all disappears one day It isn’t for nothing Our caring and cultivation has made us and overtime have shaped us into the People we have become This is what we will keep for eternity Not the forms that have taken shape As a result of our care But the very generosity Radiated from the heart I think for most of us, there is an internal bias between spontaneity and self discipline. I don’t know about you but I have been playing around with my own schedule in life of finding the sweet spot between not feeling like I am a result of life’s circumstances, making unintentional decisions and being the master of my own destiny, my own ship. Both of these are big statements but so far in my own personal life, I had to learn gradually about how to slow down my fast mind and to be in my body so that I can focus on my life unfolding in front of me.Some of us are either going completely in one direction or another. Working in a company to deliver projects on time and in the remainder of my time, creating as a poet and artist has made me recognise the value of both spontaneity and self discipline.Projects get completed when there is a rough finish line to aim towards; it teaches us to get organised and prioritise on what is really important. At the same time, creating and being inspired to create is not and cannot always be a planned thing. Yes, we need the discipline to sit down and show up- whether it is in front of a blank page, a blank canvas or whatever form of medium we create in; to show up on a regular basis so we can grow and develop as artists. Yet, as a creator, we also need to be spontaneous. To be ready to be swept off our feet with inspiration when it hits us. No matter the time nor the day, when the calls arrive from our muse, we need to be ready to go along the ride with her, instead of saying, “No, this isn’t the best time.”I want to break down the subject of our anchors here as a basis of living our daily lives. An anchor is an object that stabilises a ship so it does not set off when we wish for it to stop, or help stabilise in rough weather. And a daily practice for us is what an anchor is to a ship. It stabilises us and helps us when uncertainty arrives in our lives or when we need grounding.For example, I learned from an early age to pray everyday and little did I know that praying daily helped ground me and allowed me to manifest the goals I had when I was young. It wasn’t that I muttered a special spell. It was that as I said out loud the words of the prayers, I could feel my body reverberating with something bigger than me and experiencing this made feel that what I was facing at that time would be all the more possible to achieve. The prayers were powerful and positive. They were intentional and pure.Over the corona virus lockdown, as with many of us I am sure, I found myself in my own home and spent the past couple of years learning to find my anchor. In the beginning I was lost. But with faith in the practice of showing up, I experimented with many things, such as daily journaling, meditation, shadow work, personal development. For my physical body, I continued my HIIT programs, learned to do pilates, learned Ashtanga yoga and strength training. I went as far as waking up at 5am in the morning, fasting, observing the five precepts of my religion in Buddhism and going on my first ten day vipassana meditation retreat.Looking back, I cannot believe that I had managed to experiment with and really delve into so many practices. Some stuck on longer than others. But the premise was that not a day went by where I didn’t do any form of practice to stabilise my mind and gain clarity or move my body to become more grounded and present in myself and the environment around me.It was the first time I learned how to not react to the world happening outside of me. But to really feel my power from within and live from the inside out.Yes, I know…I went intensely over the past two years exploring many different forms of methods, which is why, as the world begins to open up again, I am learning to come to some form of a middle ground. I realise that I cannot stay fixated in that state of self I had developed these two years nor should I completely abandon them. As several options of choices in what I can do with my life appears: places to go and people to meet; where summer is approaching around the corner; I realised in the past month or so that I have become somewhat out of touch with what had kept me anchored.Because what kept me anchored was what kept me growing. Life presents us with a growing number of options and these options are ever expanding by the day in our recent times. So, in order to sail in the direction of our hopes and dreams or face our fears and discomfort, we need to navigate our lives more intentionally to help us gain clarity and grounding.Without treating my mind as a tool, without approaching my life from an observer perspective, without a healthy treatment of my body, I was not even being “my best self.” I didn’t feel like my ‘self’ at all. I didn’t feel human nor did I feel like I could interact with other humans around me. I didn’t feel like I could achieve my dreams or to face my fears and discomfort, one step at a time. Everything felt overwhelming.I know there is a growing number of self-love kind of practices around the world these days. As much as I was practising and seeing results, I told myself I was merely experimenting and I was still a skeptic. Now that I have seen my life getting filled with more distractions, I see the power of showing up once again for myself, despite all the circumstances in life, and to prioritise what is an act of caring for oneself.And sometimes that also means letting go of a sense of control. I don’t need to wake up at 5am. I don’t need to set a certain time of when I eat or sleep. But I can make sure that I take myself to a yoga or gym class and practice with someone who can guide me and who knows what they’re doing. I don’t need to overwork my brain with many ideas but I can share with someone I trust about my ideas and brainstorm with them together or get their thoughts and expertise on things I don’t know about but would like to. I don’t need to rely solely on me. We can allow others to be our anchors.An anchor isn’t a fixed practice. Just as the anchor comes up above the water sometimes to allow the ship to move once more, our practices can change in frequency and intensity depending on where we are at in our lives. The point isn’t to stop. The point is to use them day by day, for our own good.Whether you deem yourself a spontaneous person or one with self-discipline, I am certain that there is something in life that anchors you. And that this anchoring is also what simultaneously gives you the freedom. Something that allows you to stay true to a sense of self and the observer behind your life. Something that makes you feel confident again when you are feeling low. Something that helps you to stay true to your dreams and to face your fears and discomfort so you don’t give up. Something that allows you to continually expand.I wrote the poem in the beginning as a reminder to myself- that my anchors are the purest things I will ever do, and that they allow me to have the strength and clarity to continue tending to what is close to my heart.Contemplations:What and who is your anchor?How long has the anchor been with you?How does this anchor need to evolve and change to allow for what may be happening in your life at the moment? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com

What if I told you that there is no destination? Where will you go then to not get the blues? and what is your fascination to that which catches your eye? Before you can fly, let’s first grow your wings before you soar into the sky let’s first jump on a cloud that brings you on a journey even as a train arrives at its station there is no hurry its voyage continues from the current location for time is an illusion and perfection is a cage only by each moment, we engageContemplations:What ideas are you holding right now?How do you wish to continue with these ideas? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com

Once there was a time I swear there was a time I don’t remember it clearly now But there was a time Oh so ordinary Oh so unplanned It was a time I once lived There were the good times There were the bad times There were the times I was bored There were the times when Excitement innocently knocked on our doors We went on adventures in a place far far away Would it be as it has been lately had we stayed There in the heat of the summers Caught in the monsoons Life wasn’t so easy We were still making our way Soon to a place far far awayLet me paint you a scene. It’s about 9pm in the night. My mum, my sister and I are on the floor crouching and on our knees in an informal queue, one behind another, in front of our bed. It’s humid and there is a scent of mosquito coils in the air that one of us had just “blew out.” Besides the spotlight of the torch piercing through the light mesh fabric of the bed netting, it’s also slightly dark because we can’t turn on the lights. The electricity is out. Again. For the third night in a row.Just a few minutes ago, we had been enjoying watching a comedy movie, when suddenly, the dreaded flicker on the TV soon turned into a blank screen, simultaneously as all the lights in the house went off.Not before long, we are scrambling in the darkness, each of us finding a way literally towards the light. My mum is in charge of lighting the candles. I’m too nervous to use the match, let alone a lighter. Between my sister and I, one of us finds a torch. The torch will be our saviour for the night, taking us through the final preparations of bedtime. From brushing our teeth to using the toilet, it will be our form of safety amongst the unknowns that lurk in the darkness.My mum goes first. She takes a fan by the hand and lightly waves it up and down, left and right by the bed netting- using her instincts, lasting just a minute or two, before finally, braving to lift up the bottom part of the mosquito net. Creating a hole, large enough for her body to slip through as quickly as possible, she leaves the fan for the next person and enters the bed. One by one, my sister and I follow her lead.There is a trick to this. If we don’t wave the fan long enough, there will be a mosquito or two that will be lurking. If we create a hole too big to come into the bed, the mosquitoes will come inside the safety of our chamber with us. In this organic process, naturally, and most often, one of us makes a mistake and our sanctuary is compromised with blood thirsty, noisy creatures who can hide and keep us awake the entire night or present a sleepless night of scratching our bodies until we become exhausted.The bed is simple. There are two thick and large woven bamboo matts overlapping beneath us to create a space enough for three people to sleep. There are pillows for each person and long body pillows that guard the two ends of the bed netting. If there is a spare body pillow, one or two of us are likely to use it for extra comfort as we sleep throughout the night. Around the whole perimeter and above us are the mosquito netting, light enough to see through the mesh and flimsy enough to be blown away by a gust of wind, yet, tightly meshed to deter the mosquitoes from entering our safety sanctuary. The net is kept upright by the “hooks” on the four corners. These hooks are simply a loop of fabric which we have re-looped with ropes that are then tied onto any secure and fixed surface, such as a nail on the wall or a post. Some beds come with posts. But if you are sleeping on a self-made floor bed, then the trick is to make sure there is a place on all corners of the bed where the netting can be tied to. Naturally, and most often, one of us makes a mistake and our sanctuary is compromised with a lopsided netting above, either from being too loosely or too tightly fixed, or sometimes from picking a nail or a post that is too near or too far from the positions of the other corners.If we make it into our safety sanctuary, it is not quite over yet. We still have to search for any mosquitoes that may have sneakily came in with us. This is one of the reasons why we often choose to make our beds long before we settle into some entertainment of the evening. That, and also the fact that the government may decide to cut our neighbourhood quarter with no electricity. If we are well prepared, we will thank ourselves for any possible scenarios.The search for mosquitoes inside the netting is not small feat. There is only one primary task here and that is to be as quick as possible in clapping our hands together to squish the mosquitoes, without making much commotion with our bodies. They are small and we are much bigger. Therefore, the smaller our movements are during the search, the more silently and patiently we wait, these little noisy creatures are sure to come out.Soon after all mosquitoes have been detected, we would settle ourselves into our positions. I would kneel down alongside my mother and sister, with my hands clasped together, I would pray. Then I would, happy and exhausted, lay down onto the mat, half covering my body with a blanket. My eyelids would become heavier by the minute, the itchiness of the parts of my bodies where mosquitoes had sucked my blood would seem to get fainter, and I would fall asleep with the sounds of my mother, who seem to whisper prayers long into the night.The above is a memory that I recalled with my sister this past weekend. As we watched a movie on Netflix called The White Tiger, which is about an intelligent yet troubled man in India, who managed to cunningly get out of his circumstances and cycles of poverty to become a personal driver. Flashes of scenes from this movie brought my sister and I back to a time long long time ago, when we too were living in the circumstances of a developing country that was subjected to both uncontrollable forces of the climate and the government.The memory of preparing for our bed time brought back to me a visceral experience that I had longed since forgotten. Far from the country of my birth, far from where I had spent many moments of my younger childhood years, I had stowed these kinds of memories and experiences deep within my brain.I wondered how many sacred, routinely rituals like this that I have forgotten and are waiting, eagerly for me to remember and take me back to a place far far away.“You know, it’s hard to tell him about what our country is like. I feel like I don’t explain it well enough. It’s hard to tell him without actually taking him there!” My sister comments, as she recalls her conversations about Burma with her boyfriend.“I know,” I said, “I think when they meet other people there, when they meet our parents or eat the traditional foods, and when they see the place, it will paint a fuller picture. It’s like we are only a small proportion of the whole story.”That is the price of being far far away from your home country. Without regular visits, the memories seem to become far more distant. For better I have changed as a person here in the West. I am also lucky to have a household that continues to speak the language, eat traditional foods and maintain important customs. However, my sister and my story are different from our parents. Whilst they grew up and moved in their later adult years, we grew up spending most of our time here in England. We hold the traditions of our home country, but we also think with an independent mindset, with a luxury of individualism afforded here, like in many countries of the West. We are the products of two halves coming together and we are neither here nor there. Often I feel not Burmese enough, and are sometimes subjected to my parents misunderstanding of my actions. I am also not British enough. We are far far away from being one or the other.I am sure there are many strings of the sweetest of memories that are innocently hiding in the deepest parts of our subconscious. Now, I will always be on the look out for such memories. They make me smile and they bring me a sense of nostalgia with a hint of sadness of times long past. I hope that one memory is tied onto a long string of more memories to come, that take me back to the places I have walked; whose memories I will remember once more and cherish. I may never come back to relive these moments but they are a gift indeed. Because as time continues, these strings of memories will be my gifts of a time I once lived in a different way, at a different place, far far away.Contemplations:Do you remember a distant memory, from your younger years, from a place far away, that brings a smile to your face?What do you recall about this particular experience you had? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com

To Rest Rest is to do things slowly without rushing Rest is to give a gift to your mind and in turn, your body may rest too Rest is to hear the conversations in your mind and to recognise the figments of your own imagination accumulated across all these days Rest is to put things down instead of picking things up Rest is to worry less about moving backwards Rest is to disrupt your plans Rest is to surrender to the calls of that which is bigger than you Rest is to admit that enough is enough Rest is to give in to your heaviness Rest is to meet yourself where you are so that in time you may fully meet the ones you love Rest is to stay faithful that your loved ones will not leave you behind Rest is moments of silence Rest is what you need when you are going faster than your capacity to run besides yourself Rest is what you need to engage Rest is what you need to hear the sounds of your own wisdom that cannot come from thoughts or running around never intending to stop Rest is to rest, is to rest, is to restDo you remember the days when you were a child? I remember mine vaguely. I experienced time differently then. It was slower. Many say that, “Life was uncomplicated then.” In some ways, when I reflect on those times versus where I am now, at the age of 29, I wouldn’t say that they were better. I am not sure also that “uncomplicated” is also the right word to use here.I would say that it was a different time in my life. In all of our human lives. When I think back about the paths I walked on over all these years since my childhood, the different journeys I took, the trials and tribulations I had, the times when I worked hard in my endeavours, I am proud. I think that as humans, as we continue to grow physically and get “older,” we are constantly expanding. From studying to finding our vocations to moving away from family to travelling to living with others to living by ourselves to starting a family, to starting a business, the list will continue. As each seemingly challenging next thing comes into our lives, we seem to prove time and time again that we had been ready all along. We had been ready to experience a part of ourselves that we didn’t meet in our previous years, let alone last week, but now, despite whatever may have happened in the middle, we did it.We did it. We learn that we are deserving of ourselves for greatness, as told by our eyes and our eyes only. We learn that we can have responsibilities and not do a shabby job at taking care of a household! Above all, we learn that we are human.Reminiscing about our childhoods can be a great nostalgic past time, and for a brief second, dwelling in those memories, we forget where we are. It is a sweet time. But like all times, as my grandmother would say, “Time waits for no one.”Although the rhythm of our lives are now dictated mostly by our purest of intentions, I think it is very easy these days to not only distract ourselves but to do it without any realisation. Our smart phones are a quick and easy fix for masking our discomfort and pain. We can now choose to feel temporary moments of joy and laughter without going into the root cause of our heaviness and pain.Things are moving faster these days because technology is developing quickly. Expectations from our loved ones and ourselves are heightened to send an instant reply and our clients expect completed work to arrive in their inbox faster than you have sufficient hands to perform their task.And if we are still twiddling our thumbs, we think to ourselves that we are not being useful members of society. Everyone is doing something and if we don’t start now, we will surely be left behind. So we jump on the most popular self help programs or a shiny new thing that everyone is doing, maybe even fooling ourselves that finally now, we are worthy and are useful, but ultimately, losing faith in ourselves and perhaps the grand intelligence of time and space. We end up rushing into conclusions to not feel the pain or the heaviness we are deep down feeling in the first place.I think you understand what I’m trying to say here- there are many triggers. There are many triggers to stop us from getting a true form of rest, in both body and in mind.If there is something that I would like to take away from my experience during the pandemic- from the last two years, is how I learned to develop the ability to rest fully. I wrote this poem as a reminder to myself, and hopefully for you too, that should we catch a moment where we feel like our mental and physical states are overwhelmed, that we rest. We rest as though nothing else on this Earth mattered. That we feel like we have the permission to take ourselves to a place where nothing else exists but the quiet whispers of our inner wisdom.This wisdom that allows us to have a bigger perspective of our life. This wisdom that functions without time but with endless amounts of patience and faith.Resting is simpler than we think. Most often, it starts with a strong intention, a decisive state of mind, that mostly come from having had enough, and to stop believing in everything our minds are telling us that we should be doing.You see, I’ve noticed lately this part of my brain that wants to always solve problems by doing things or taking things on. That when I have a particular problem or challenge in my life, that in order to solve it, I should be thinking about it constantly or else nothing will get done, or the problem will get the better of me!But in rest, our problems will seem minuscule and solvable. We will meet ourselves without any other external noise but hear our bodies breathing. Should we meet the many voices that are still circling around in our heads, panicking that we may soon be left behind, we can just notice them and softly leave them be.It is not easy. Given our human nature, we are creatures of habit and creatures that can get addicted to adrenaline. It is not easy, but, especially at this day and age, especially as we are most beautifully and frustratingly human, we must, as one of my favourite poets David Whyte would say:“Go against yourself.”Contemplations:What is your body and your mind telling you right now?Are they different messages or do they align?Where is the place within that you know you should go?How can you go to this place and cultivate some rest? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com

The Traveller She who abandons all she has ever known Half woman Half horse A fool with merely a bundle of a bag on her back Shooting an arrow onto some distant land filled with Different faiths Different doctrines Different beliefs The colours of the Globe fulfils her She is receptive to every gesture of love orchestrated by the Universe not merely limiting herself to her fellow humans and creatures The marriage of spirit and matter are just as if not more alluring In every passage She finds a way to fall in love with different manifestations of Herself A free roamer relying on trust and openness An autonomy based on Her Own Philosophy which she brings to every corner of the earth Her appreciation for all that is Thrills the stars that sing for her The wind that blows charms her way and Above all She receives the love letters the Universe has written Just For Her “That will be 1000 kroners each,” said the man in front of us, holding onto a ticket machine, no uniform or identification on show, “remember for next time that the tickets in Prague have different zones and your ticket is not valid for these areas.”My partner Brett and I looked dumbfounded and lost for words. A second ago, we were like giddy teenagers after spending an evening at what is called “Sapa” aka. Little Hanoi. Just a few minutes ago, we had spent our last evening wandering around a huge expanse of land filled with many make-shift structures, buildings and warehouses filled with sprawls of restaurants, street food, markets and shops. Just a few minutes ago, on a warm spring day, we had entered south-east Asia, in Europe, discovering a hidden gem far from the central area of this historically beautiful, faithfully timeless and touristically packed Prague.We complied. Brett took out his card and paid the fine, “this is a penalty receipt that will last you for one hour,” said the guy with the ticket machine.We had just realised we hopped on a bus going in the opposite direction of our destination when this man approached us. This morning, on our way back from the countryside of the Czech-German border, the coach driver gave us two tickets and had optimistically told us that once we reach Prague, these tickets will be good for our transport around the City. Little did we know that the tickets were zoned. Little did we know that we would also be hopping onto two more wrong buses after this incident, before we reached our intended destination.“Oh well, at least we will have a good story to tell,” Brett remarked, his versatility and openness to the journey’s twists and turns, as evident as ever. In fact, throughout this past week, something that spoke loudly to me through his reactions was his ability to bounce back through the various surprises, some good and some not so good, of this trip we were taking together.This simple remark wasn’t just his reliance on his mental strength alone, no. I felt that it came from  a space of wholehearted faith and trust in the twists and turns of the journey. No matter the strengths and weaknesses he or I possessed, no matter that there would be pleasure or pain, action or inaction, or all of the above- here, sitting on the bus in front of me, as rooted in his philosophy and of his truth as ever, was a traveller. A traveller open for risking into deep changes of experience and of the mundane aspects of journeying into the unknown- unafraid to stand for misfortunes when his hopes are high or to receive incredible strokes of faith when he least expects them.Throughout the week I observed this partner beside me.Indeed, as the poems suggest, he is a fool, in the greatest meaning of this word. Indeed, his compass isn’t set for one particular destination but it is very much set in perspective to be widened by the people he meets and the places he steps foot in. To risk it all when a journey calls for him and to not be limited by his own way of doing and seeing things. He is open for recommendations and advice.That is the thing about being travellers and not tourists. They are hardened by the miles travelled via foot, via planes, via trains and other modes of transport. They do not shy away from the mundane, to tread the paths unknown and sometimes for many many hours nor do they shy away from the initial strangeness of scents and of sounds and sights. In fact, these very things are like a drug for them. The more they see, the more they want to continue to see. The more they put faith in life outside of themselves and their own bubble, the more life offers to them the chances and opportunities the few get to discover. The more they experience, the more they understand.Don’t be fooled by these kinds of fools. They are the good kinds of fools. You know, they possess a freedom that cannot be bought by money but only through such experiences of expanding their horizons.When we hit some bumps along the road, most of the time, this man beside me was as much zen-like as any other monks I have met so far. I suspect that throughout his travels, life has given to him both pleasure and abstinence, action and inaction; all of which could never have been a loss for him because, as he learned to be a traveller, he learned that every experience presented to him a gift of some kind that shaped him as a person.As his lover, I am jealous. I am jealous of the paths he has travelled so far, seeing the foreign sights I have yet to see and of the experiences that have shaped him with my absence. And yet, simultaneously, I am in awe. Because I once told myself that I could only dream of being, once upon a time, of being with someone who is both adventurous in spirit and grounded in their values, at the same time. Once upon a time, I had met many travellers. Exciting, alluring and interesting as ever. Yet, I think there is something that separates the good kinds of travellers from the not so good ones.The good ones are the ones who can still shoot their arrow into those distant lands, filled with different faiths, doctrines and beliefs, shooting this arrow with their truth, their philosophy and their values still in tact. The ones who know why they do what they do and why they have traversed in these particular directions. The ones who are open to change but never forget where they came from or what brought them here in the first place. The ones who do not lose themselves to mere attractions but see substance beyond what meets the eyes of many. The ones who do not lose their ground, even as they are flying above in the sky.I suspect that my traveller-self is taking root. I suspect that my partner will be both a reflection and inspiration for what is to come in my own life. I also suspect, that at this day and age, as countries begin to open up in a post pandemic world, travelling, with its mundane and volcanic experiences it presents, will be a mirror for how we can grow and handle the more day-to-day experiences of our lives.Contemplations:What characteristics of the traveller do you possess, and not possess?Who are the travellers in your life?What can you learn from them? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com

The Grandmother Young One You are only twenty one Barely an adult Still shy as a child The world has yet to Shake wildy for you In time Life will tear you apart To bring you back up What is meant to be Is still hidden from you You heart is still tender Your head is still strongly naive About the things that Can bring you down on your knees This life is long and This life is short Remember about the tortoise Who had a steady pace Go slow and you will win the race Have patience and you will Weather the storm Escaping the pain is not What we are made for This mistake is one of many Your strengths and your weaknesses Will be your own belonging I will be planting flowers for you In heaven May you reap every seed you sow May the rain lessen your sorrows I am your grandmother I am your light In the silence of the night I will never leave your side The Mother I Will Miss I watched you that evening Lying alone in the double bed That was made for two Your eye lids heavy From your tired days You will have lived a comfortable life When the time comes You will have lived in a Beautiful cage of Freedom as narrated from Someone else’s eyes When the time comes I watched your body and saw Something else that evening It was a gross body Prone to impermanence Prone to decay one day Until there was nothing else left But the imprints of a mother Who once was mine My mother How long will it be until your Body is just a shell and You will finally leave this life in ecstacy Finally going to the places you’ve always wanted to go Finally facing a true freedom How long will it be until Your lips no longer change shape As stories come out from these lips About the birds or your frustration At how I put up boundaries with you At how angry you are with dad At how you made the right choices In the end How long will it be until you Finally stop blinking and you leave once and for all Like you always said you would? I thought time would last forever Until now I thought this day Was only a distant dream Never to actually be lived out I only lived in hope that one day We would high five each other in heaven But before that There is something inevitable I must face How naive was I to believe solely in my imagination And deny my human heart It is inevitable because I have loved you In this life Heartache will come in the face of loss I finally realised that evening When your time comes I will miss you as you miss her No one will be able to replace your presence As no one else could replace her in your life Your mother I do understand now that one day My heart will also ache with loneliness Without a particular presence This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com

As we were transitioning slowly out of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, I spent a lot of my spare time working on myself. It was my second year in of being in the personal development world. It was my second year of living by myself. It was my second year of getting to know who I really was.If you had met me a couple of years before, you probably would have met someone who was lost. I was repeating the same patterns of behaviour and circulating around me were people who I desperately wanted to help but couldn’t, because they did not want to help themselves. The women in my family knew. They were saying that these people were literally “sucking” my soul energy. Someone I know described me as, “the nicest person they’ve ever met.” It was a great compliment but, at that time, I didn’t want to wear this description, this label. Being nice was fitting into the world around me, to the people around me, without respecting my own boundaries. Being nice was always saying yes. Being nice was picking up after people without looking after myself.The totality of who I was at that time, the totality of who I am now, is more than that one word. I think all of us cannot be summed up into one word, nor should we allow ourselves or anyone else to do so. Language is powerful. Stringing words together can be both a melodic and a free-ing exercise for our psyche. I think in some ways, at that time, two years ago, I was already walking into the person I would develop into.You may have heard me mention the poet David Whyte before. He is a writer that have brought a lot of healing into my life these past few months. I often hear him say that when we are presented with a problem, when we are presented with a difficulty, a challenge we cannot solve, when we fail to see a solution, any solutions, right away, to “ask the right questions.”He isn’t the only one who says that. Another figure who has made a big impact in my life these recent years has been Reverend Michael Beckwith, who talks about “asking lofty questions.” The questions that allow you to dream, to expand.And the work that I will recite now, is by the poet Rilke, from the book “Letters to a young Poet”. It is one of my favourite lines and it reads like this:“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”And so, during the past two years, from meeting the works of Reverend Michael Beckwith and of David Whyte, I was reminded of these lines by Rilke again and that is what I did.The thing about a contemplative tradition or a practice is learning the art of patience. No matter if the problem we face is a personal one or a global one, if a circumstance causes us a lot of pain and confusion or we find ourselves in some kind of a desperate need, we may end up taking the wrong turns. We may end up being unable to think clearly. But eventually, even as our heart continues to ache, our bodies will tire and instead of asking, “why me? Why them? Why us?” We may begin asking a different kind of question.This is the art of patience you see. Even if we had just ran around chasing our invisible tails like an excited dog, the question, a right kind of question that we need to repeat, may not come straight away. We need to be patient. Our antennas have been tuned to different frequencies all along. It is no wonder that this will take time.The amount of times I have pondered over a question by now is numerous. I would still be in the same situation, the outer circumstances haven’t changed, but, I stubbornly. tell myself, speaking to myself over and over, “What is the question I should be asking here?” But of course, the lesson of patience is that it doesn’t come right away. I ask and I am met with silence on most days. Days where I think what I am doing is simply ridiculous. A self-made, made-up circumstance - possibly worth nothing, useless and not worth my time or energy.And on that brink, as I am about to give up, because it may possibly be worth nothing, that it is just myself entertaining my own curiosity, I continue to ask. It becomes like a game for me. The question may come to me. It may not. I have nothing to lose at this point. And if the right question comes, it would be a great surprise.I am playing a game with my own patience. Even as my heart aches, even with a sense of losing myself, even if I continue to chase my own tail, I continue to try to stay patient simultaneously. Eventually it comes. This has happened to me time and time again. I don’t think I am neither special nor possess special powers. It is just that I was patient.Sometimes the wait is a mere few seconds. Our hearts may already know what needed to be asked. But sometimes the wait is months or years.For me, framing my perspective with questions is golden. We meet many people day in and day out. As we get into positions of authority, as we get older, as our life expands to not just our immediate family members but extended families and so forth, we will meet souls with different life experiences and as such, different perspectives. We are also bombarded with many black and white statements and many schools of thoughts.Sticking to a one particular view only makes our lives smaller. This is where division occurs. But that little question mark at the end of a sentence? That is priceless. That little question mark opens up doors to a deeper relationship with our interiority. A place where we discover we are more than a word and where our life circumstances are only a small fraction of millions of possibilities. And from that place of cultivating patience from within, of waiting for the right questions to appear, like Rilke says, we will, “gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”No Rilke didn’t write in this letter about talking about an answer, not thinking about an answer. With a question that rings truthfully for ourselves, our bodies take on a different quality. Once this question is asked, our hands and our feet begin to walk in a subtly different rhythm. We find ourselves in places and spaces we hadn’t occupied before. Our sensory windows get attuned to other sounds and sights. It is slow. It is gradual. It is steady.And the only way to realise the answers sometimes is to look back after a certain point, many many many years from now, and realise how you had asked a certain question time and time again, and began to live it at the time of birthing this question, of also meeting this question. And how, in this certain future, you are about to be on your way to asking another question.Contemplations:What questions have you lived?What is the question you should be asking here? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com

When you see the word love, what is the first thing that comes up for you? Romantic relationships? Friendship? Acts of service?We have all been impacted by love at some point in our lives. This is because we all interpret the word in our own ways. Love is both abstract and concrete at the same time. The elusive nature of love has driven many creatives to sing, to write, to speak and to draw about it for many years.My relationship with love lately has been the relationship I am developing with my heart. The heart is a tangible part of all of us. We all have a heart that continues to beat in our bodies. Without a heart, we would not be alive.How often do you notice this part of your body?It communicates with us everyday. When I am starting something new in an uncharted territory, I often feel its motions- the heartbeats getting faster and faster. I have realised over time that this is a signal to move into the discomfort of a new situation and to not run away.When I am sad, the heart aches. The heart is largely made out of muscle after all. This is a signal for me to put myself first to tend to the situation of the pain and to not focus on anyone else’s.The brain and the heart connection is like a good relationship.The heart needs a good companion and the best companion for the heart, in my opinion, is the brain.The brain in itself is a huge roadmap to our human behaviour and tendencies. But this isn’t a psychology book, nor am I an expert on our brains so I won’t go into much detail. What I can do is to share my experience.If we are not aware of our minds, our minds can drive us into many unconscious behaviours. If we think we have the control, we better think again. Vipassana meditation has shown me the this is the nature of our minds. We cannot change it. However, it doesn’t have to limit us.In fact, the brain is a very powerful tool to cultivate a very useful mind. One which we can direct in our day to day lives for practical purposes. We just tend to use the brain more often than it is needed.I have a brain that runs faster than I can catch up with in my day to day life. I do marvel at the countless ideas it can create and the meticulous planning it can produce for far down the future. Yet, no matter the ideas and the learning I have done thus far, I have realised that life has its own timing. It doesn’t work in a 24 hours a day, 365 days a year type of routine. No.We often confuse our use of time with the evolution of life on earth.Observe the clouds passing for one whole hour and you will be transported into a timeline that is infinite. Because as much as our understanding of time comes from the practicalities of how we operate in society, the biological essence of who we are is not as robotic and linear as our use of time.Therefore, it is good to give the brain a break every once in awhile and let the heart take over.The heart is quite good at communicating to us what excites us and gives us joy. The brain will think about many options to find happiness but the heart will demonstrate to us, in the moment, of what we need.I once read in a book that a good relationship is like a dance. Sometimes you both come together to dance and other times, you have to be apart in between the dances to recharge and rest.The brain and the heart connecting together is similar. The dance between the two means the decisions we make in our lives come from an acknowledgment that we are whole and human.The break between the two means that we do not become exhausted and burnt out in work (from not balancing life with what we do and what makes us happy), nor do we fall under the burden of our emotions (from not having perspective and a clear direction and understanding about our lives).So…May we cultivate a beautiful relationship between our hearts and our brains. Because, indeed, there is a relationship between our hearts and our brains.Contemplations:What do you know about love so far?What are the things that truly, truly, give you joy in life?What is the relationship between your heart and your brain? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit winphyo.substack.com