Sweet Miracles

It’s 2 am but i’m still feeling quite energetic since i fell asleep when nursing little boy to sleep just now and ended up having a 3 hour nap, so thought i wld just blog abt today. It’s SO nice that Mr Gua Gua and i are lucky enough to enjoy a V-day celebration together, despite being married and having a baby – i’m sure there are many couples out there who might not have the chance or inclination to celebrate V-day in such a situation. Either they’re too busy, too bored or just didn’t want to bother (in Mandarin, dou lao fu lao qi le! -> already husband and wife?). But i’m glad that Mr Gua Gua is the romantic and obliging kind of guy, he didn’t need much cajoling from me to decide to take half a day off to spend with me.

I have always wanted to try out Hwee San’s transformation journey for couples. It’s a gameboard that very cleverly incorporates many many details that through playing it, you will get to learn about yourself – how you go through life, handle setbacks, and relationships with others. It’s really reflects your current life journey, and of cos, as the name suggests, hopefully from learning more about yourself and receiving many insights and messages through the game, your journey would be transformed for the better.

I played it once a few years ago with 3 others, one of whom is my close pal. It was such an enjoyable sessions that the 4-5 hours simply flew by and i even received some interesting insights about my friendship with the pal, from the synchronicities in the way we played the game. Of cos, it wouldn’t be that interesting and enjoyable if not for Hwee San’s acute intuition and light-hearted style of facilitation. It was also more fun cos there was one player that i know and i cld see if the messages for her seem to fit for her. So when i saw that HS was also offering this game for couples, i was immediately hooked. If not for the cost, i wld have dragged Mr Gua Gua down there the very next available day! Mr Gua Gua wasn’t that keen as expected, but given that it’s V-day and he knew my enthusiasm for this, he very obligingly agreed. Yeh!

A bit about this game. We start off by having to get the opportunity to be “born”. After which, we need to progress through 4 levels – physical, emotional, mental, spiritual – by collecting either 6 awareness tokens or 3 angels and also 1 service token. There are times where we may receive setbacks where we will be given pain, and if our awareness is not enough, or we are not mindful enough to exchange our awareness tokens to give up our pain tokens, we may get stuck in the game. However as long as we gain more awareness AND remember to use our awareness to  get rid of our pain, we can proceed. Sometimes the other player/s may also get the chance to assist by giving awareness to the player, or taking away his pain. This is one illustration how this game can reflect our current life situation and how we (and others) might contribute to or hinder our spiritual growth.

It turned out that both Mr Gua Gua and i was “born” just from the very first throw of the dice, and Hwee San joked that we couldn’t wait to come into this world. She shared that whenever she played this game, she would not get to born even after throwing the dice 3 times which is the max, and hence she always had to be kicked out from the unborn realm by, what she quipped as, “universal caesarian”!

I was the one who received countless insights, many more than Mr Gua Gua, and i progressed through the levels quite quickly, except for the emotional level where i received more pain than other levels. In fact the moment i reached the emotional level, i received 4 pain tokens. That was right after Mr Gua Gua received 2 pain tokens and got a set back card that says “misery loves company”. Hwee San did some exploration and we agreed that i was probably allowing myself to be affected by Mr Gua Gua’s pain, and while Mr Gua Gua thought he was keeping his pain from me by not talking about it, i was still affected at least energetically and my pain was even more than his.

One interesting thing was that cos i played the game before, i knew and experienced myself that it’s very easy to just throw the dice when it’s your turn and forget to exchange your pain tokens for awareness tokens. The latter must be done before throwing the dice, cos once the dice is thrown, you can only move the no. of steps which is the no. on the dice minus the no. of pain tokens. If zero or negative, you cannot move and so you’re “stuck” which is very true in life if we are in so much pain that we cannot move on.

We were not supposed to remind one another about this during the game so that we recognise our mindfulness level. Mr Gua Gua did forget and i reminded him afterwards. Then it was my turn and i just took the dice and threw it, totally forgetting that i had pain tokens which i forgot to exchange the awareness tokens for! Hey…. a classic example of focusing so much on another person that you forget to help yourself first. Hehe… well this and the previous thing about pain made me see that i am prob over-concerned abt Mr Gua Gua and need to come back to myself, help myself with my own issues first.

Anyway, i remembered to get rid of my pain on my next turn (haha) and almost immediately after i graduated to the mental level. I finished the game very quickly after. I was actually hoping not to get too many awareness tokens so i can stay in the game and play for a longer time, but too bad, as Hwee San, if i’m meant to finish, i’m meant to finish! She even said, be careful what i wish for… maybe the reason why i’m still in samsara is because i’m enjoying myself here too much! Haha… cld be true!

Mr Gua Gua, on the other hand, kinda lingered on the emotional level for a while. Luckily i “serviced” him by giving him some awareness tokens so he finally got to the mental level. Think he didn’t stay too long here, but when he got to the spiritual level, woah, that’s where he got plenty of insights and “universal feedback”. Hwee San said it’s quite rare for players to receive universal feedback, and he got 3! I said he prob haven’t been listening to the universe, and now he’s playing this game, the universe is really grabbing the chance to tell him a thing or two. In fact, the universe actually scolded him not once but twice. For what, i shall not say here… but it’s kinda funny. Haha… but there was a happy ending cos the last universal feedback was received when he has just completed the game, and the universe was like congratulating him on finally having the courage to step in front to reclaim in divine right. I thought that was very nice.

Hmm… i really enjoyed myself during this session. Even though i finished early, it was actually even more fun to watch Mr Gua Gua’s progress. The bystander really sees the game better. There were certain cards i got that i didn’t really know what to make of, but every single card that Mr Gua Gua got made perfect sense. To me at least… he always didn’t know what it was talking about, but when i shared with them what i thought, he would be like oh yeah.

Well, i’m glad that it wasn’t a waste of time for Mr Gua Gua cos he said he gained “somewhat”. For Mr Gua Gua, i think “somewhat” is considered quite significant. As for myself, i really need to internalise some of the messages given  to me but most of it was more of affirmation and encouragement and i certainly feel good about that!

Most importantly, during the final debrief, thanks to Hwee San, Mr Gua Gua and i got some insights about our relationship which was really the goal of the whole game today. What happened during the game was that I was stuck on the emotional level cos i was attached to his pain, but once i let go of it, i progressed very quickly. He, on the other hand, spent much of the early part of the game, servicing and appreciating me. Basically, he was mostly giving towards me, and getting little for himself. Just to point out though, the service and appreciation was nice but they were not required for me to complete each level. And once it was game over for me, he quickly got to the spiritual level where he had to deal with quite a lot of stuff. So perhaps the universe is trying to tell us to stop focusing so much on each other and pay more attention to our own spiritual growth! In fact, by doing that, we would help each other a lot more. Once i have “graduated”, Mr Gua Gua felt free to concentrate on his own ascension, and of cos, if he was able to deal with his own pain, then i would also be able to concentrate on my own issues. Yeh…. think this was such a wonderful insight for both of us. The session was definitely worth its time and money. What a great way of spending V-day together!

After that we went to Safra for dinner in this very affordable restaurant with pretty gd food, and on this special day, they even had a guitarist going around to strum music and a photographer to take polaroids for each table. It’s my first time taking a polaroid…. somehow the photo made us look like we were from the 70s.  

As for gift exchange, well the digicam was mostly sponsored by Mr Gua Gua so i already got that as a V-day pressie before V-day. However i was bugging Mr Gua Gua if i wld get another gift too… no fun not getting on V-day itself! So i guess he must have gone to get it today – 2 nice shawls as well as a pre-ordered bouquet of roses on the way to dinner. Thanks Mr Gua Gua! And for me, this year’s V-day present was really last min cos i don’t have that much time to go shopping or even think of what to give him. Mr Gua Gua was demanding (yes demanding!) that i get this set of utensils with frog designs which we saw at the cable car sovenir shop on top of Mt Faber the other time. Ya, he was expecting me to walk up there to buy it in order to show my sincerity. Bleah…. and of cos, i didn’t do it.

Yesterday i was rather desperate and only had abt half an hour to shop. Before i already prayed to Green Tara to guide me to getting a gd pressie for Mr Gua Gua so i kinda walked around in Lucky Plaza hoping to find something. I was actually thinking abt crystals and to my relief, i stumbled upon a crystal shop on the ground floor, and guess what? While choosing crystals, i saw a sculpture of a cute frog lying down with his head resting on hs arm and it comes with a message i like you. There wasn’t a price tag on it and the shop owner charged me just $10. Guess that’s a sign that i’m in the right place! After all, why wld there be such a thing in a crystal shop? Anyway i also got a nice piece of citrine which is supposed to attract abundance cos Mr Gua Gua seems obsessed with $$$ lately. Hopefully it works for him!

Last but not least, i had the inspiration to write a song for him yesterday and i just completed it on the way to Hwee San’s place. It’s rather personal so i won’t share it here, but i have to say it’s something that touched me a lot while writing it, and when it was finally completed (sigh, it was one of those that didn’t come out all in one shot… had to rewrite a few times and took quite a lot of brain juice!), i was so satisfied with it. I sang it to Mr Gua Gua after dinner and while my rendition wasn’t perfect, i enjoyed singing it to him…hehe… ok, a bit egoistic, cos i really liked my own song so much. I even insisted on singing it to him a second time. HAHAHA! But the impt thing is he felt quite touched by it and when i asked him which pressie he liked best, he said it’s the song. He insisted he wasn;t humouring me, and i’m going to just take his word for it.

Oh well… it was really a good V-day. Possibly the best so far? At least it’s not something traditional like a movie and dinner. Hee… Hwee San told us that there’s an advanced transformation journey where the spiritual level is extended and the whole game takes 6 hours (!!). I already told Mr Gua Gua let’s go for it next V-day. Already can’t wait!

PS: At the end of the game we were given a insight which is supposed to be a strength for achieving our goal, and mine was “leap to the next miracle” which was at first kinda weird cos it’s more of an instruction for the playing of the game then a real insight. But Hwee San helped to probe and i realised, perhaps this just means that i need to focus on the miracles on my life. Well, i didn’t call this blog sweet miracles for nothing!