So, It's My Birthday!

Reflections on my 29th year: destiny, authenticity, and awakening

One night, my partner remarked that someone made a mistake in the Simulation by making the moon too big. She asked me what the bright light beside it was—I think it was Venus, but I said, “Someone poked a hole in the dome. It’s much brighter outside.” The next day, I was talking to a friend in the mystic arts about the moon. Apparently, it was in Taurus. Out of the blue, she asked me what numerological year 2023 is for me and after some calculation we saw that it is currently a “9.” This represents change: the end of a phase. My metaphor for this is gulong ng palad (wheel of fate). Sometimes you’re on top and at other times you’re underneath it—but it’s always moving, and it’s stable even in its dynamism. Kapalaran, or destiny, also has the word palad (palm). What a poetic thing! Your destiny is the palm of your hand.

It’s also my Saturn return this year. I’ve always had my doubts about astrology, but as a system of meaning-making, it’s incredibly useful as a key to the subconscious. So far, I’ve gotten my license to practice psychotherapy, been sober for months, and published multiple academic articles, including one about my own psychological theory. Feels like a lot of new things.

Adding to this, I’ve been feeling really stagnant about my research work as well as my creative pursuits. I’ve been trapped in debates surrounding the categorical absolutes of cultural identity. “What makes a Filipino a ‘Filipino’?” Jay Yacat, an important figure in modern Sikolohiyang Pilipino, said that we might have to shift from being “maka-Pilipino” to being “maka-Kapwa.” How profound—rather than insisting on defining “Filipino-ness,” we can free ourselves and focus on community, liberation, and transcendence. We’ve been too focused on words and labels, rather than what they mean. In my imagination, that’s like reading a travel book and claiming to have actually visited. Well, I’m packing my bags, but I’ll be traveling light.

The Work So Far

I can’t tell you all my plans, largely because I can be terribly inconsistent, and I might regret committing to something that I might, a few months from now, be sick of. I can, however, tell you something important that I’ve realized. 

It seems like main reason why I feel like my work isn’t moving is because I’ve been spending too much time pursuing topics that I don’t actually want to. People often ask me about precolonial society and Indigenous traditions—this would probably surprise a lot of people, but these topics are not actually the focus of my work. Yes, my work is definitely informed by ethnographic research and historical documents, but I defer to other social scientists for their expertise in these matters. My interest is more on the folk psychology of the common tao, and the casual, indigenized spirituality of the modern-day Filipino. It’s the small, everyday things: the ordinary theology of bahala na, the fascinating mysteries of kababalaghan, etc. My work is not about unearthing memories to trace our origins—it is about identifying how existing cultural elements come together to create the patterns of reality that influence us today. I look at what anthropologist Zeus Salazar called kinagisnang sikolohiya (commonsense psychology) and organize them into theoretical structures that can reflect our lived experience (katutubong sikolohiya).

The problem is that I’ve been carried away by opinion and censorship, like a water current carries a sleeping shrimp away. Of course I listen to correction and constructive feedback—this only adds nuance to the things I know and love. I greatly appreciate it when people share with me verifiable facts, resource recommendations, and alternative views. I love it when people are able to connect the dots between something I said and something else that they know, and it’s so heartwarming to hear a personal anecdote connected to a concept I shared. But I often get too excited, and I tend to immediately react to other people’s positive or negative reactions to what I share, which then leads me to places that I didn’t intend to go to in the first place. I think the way moving forward is me identifying the scope of my interests.

Imagine that you’re lost in a certain place and you see a man walking on the street. You decide to stop and ask for directions. They live in this area, so they can tell you exactly how you can reach your destination. This man can also tell you how to get to the other town, but if you ask him how to navigate that town, he might either give you vague information or just shrug his shoulders. I’m that man, and the place you’re currently in is a small town within the larger area of the Philippine social sciences. Here, dead relatives visit dreams, folkloric beings court young women, and saints possess modern prophets. It’s magnificent and unbelievable, yet they are common stories (in my life, I know two women who were courted by engkanto).

I carry on mindfully wandering this area, mapping out its psychogeography. I am a scholar-flaneur, walking through the mysterious, shifting streets of a living cultural city…

What Comes Next

I have been contemplating on the need for a deeper level of content.

My work today is evolving. I started Sikodiwa to explore my passion for magic and mythology in the Philippine context, but now the dream is starting to manifest in the world, and it’s calling on me to transform further. It is all very exciting for me, and I’m honored to have you witness all this—you are part of the movement towards decolonizing and indigenizing. This is important cultural work, and as much as it is serious and sacred, it is also tremendously fun.

Indigenous psychology, being a psychology of liberation, should free us from the shackles of pedantic and foreign ideologies that we don’t fully resonate with. What is authentic to us? And why should being authentic feel so heavy and overly-academic, in the sense that it is cold, dense, and skeletal, extracted from the vibrant context of day-to-day life? Filipino psychology works towards kalayaan, which is independence and strength and vastness and harmony. My approach to this is by following the rhythm of my soul. (You can read my essay, What I Am Not, to gain a better understanding of what it is I actually do.)

So, as I continue to release free content in the form of casual essays and designs, I will be giving special attention to deeper work, in the form of hours of recorded lectures, one-on-one consultations and mentorship, downloadable e-books and zines, etc. All members of The Sikodiwa Circle will be able to access this. Right now, almost 100 minutes of content are already available for those who sign up, on the fundamentals concepts and Philippine shamanism. I’ll be uploading more soon. Subscriptions will help me sustain myself as a third-world researcher, allowing me to continue exploring this field and introducing more people around the world to the dynamic and timeless magic of our culture.

For those who would like to join me, you can find out more here: