Dr. Rishel Mañas

13/01/2026

Where are you today?🧘🏻‍♀️

13/01/2026

Indeed!

In all my training as a psychotherapist in the last century, no one taught practices of love, compassion, joy and serenity. Not until I studied Buddhist meditations did I learn how to cultivate such positive states.

You can transform fearful attitudes like ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’ - and make room for more ease, joy and unexpected goodness in your life. Try some different meditations on my website or on SoundCloud.

Repost

06/01/2026

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
~ Carl Jung

I always affirm my patients for their courage to face even the darkest parts of themselves and bring them to the light. For indeed, much of our journey through life is shadowboxing.

I myself am often confronted by my own contradictions but instead of being shameful about it and self-critical, I now know better to choose kindness, attunement, and self-compassion. Believe me, it is an ongoing, daily tough choice that I make so as not to succumb and regress to old, automatic patterns brought about mostly by adverse childhood experiences.

So, this is an encouragement for you to begin your journey inward. Yes, it’s the kind of journey that very few travellers take. It’s difficult. It’s exhausting at times. It will surely bring you down to your knees. But, I promise you won’t regret it. Ever.

The light in me honors the light in you.🕯️🤍

31/12/2025

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thank you, December! 🤗
Thank you, 2025! You’ve been awesome!💗
Thank you, The Ever Faithful One for your unconditional love, abundant grace, and relentless mercy!🙏🏻👆

29/12/2025

There is always light. If only we're brave enough to see it. If only we're brave enough to be it. ~ Amanda Gorman

(Art by Karl Fitzgerald)

26/12/2025

“What the new year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the new year.” ~ Vern McLellan

What are you bringing to the new year?

What are you choosing to leave behind that is not serving you anymore?

20/12/2025

REVERENCE FOR REALITY
🌼🌸🌻

Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World

Barbara Brown Taylor writes of the humility necessary to experience reverence for the world around us:

According to the classical philosopher Paul Woodruff, reverence is the virtue that keeps people from trying to act like gods. “To forget that you are only human,” he says, “to think you can act like a god—this is the opposite of reverence.” [1]

While most of us live in a culture that reveres money, reveres power, reveres education and religion, Woodruff argues that true reverence cannot be for anything that human beings can make or manage by ourselves.

By definition, he says, reverence is the recognition of something greater than the self—something that is beyond human creation or control, that transcends full human understanding. God certainly meets those criteria, but so do birth, death, s*x, nature, truth, justice, and wisdom….

Reverence stands in awe of something—something that dwarfs the self, that allows human beings to sense the full extent of our limits—so that we can begin to see one another more reverently as well. An irreverent soul who is unable to feel awe in the presence of things higher than the self is also unable to feel respect in the presence of things it sees as lower than the self. [2]

Author Victoria Loorz describes how a slower pace allows us to experience reverence for the natural world and others:

Reverence is slow and intentional. It allows awe to fill your lungs and bring tears to your eyes, and it floods your bloodstream with extra oxygen and energy. Wandering with reverence means you’re looking at the world with softened eyes that no longer see others as objects of beauty or utility. Reverence allows you to behold the trees and waters and tiny ants as separate beings.

You acknowledge them as individuals who are as concerned about their own survival and enjoyment of life as you are about yours. They are as important to their relations as you are to yours.

John O’Donohue, a Celtic poet, philosopher, and priest, wrote the book (in both senses of that phrase) on Anam Cara, or “soul friends.”… He says, “Reverence bestows dignity and it is only in the light of dignity that the beauty and mystery of a person will become visible.” [3]

The same applies to seeing the dignity of a tree or a place or even yourself….
Even if you can’t initially conjure this deferential respect for beings who are not human, just intending the posture of reverence makes room for relationship. This, in turn, makes room for the presence of the holy.

According to O’Donohue, “What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach…. When we approach with reverence great things decide to approach us.” [4]
🌸🌼🌻

Source: CAC Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations
References
[1] Paul Woodruff, Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2014), 1.
[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith (HarperOne, 2009), 21.
[3] John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace(Harper Perennial, 2005), 31.
[4] Victoria Loorz, Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred (Broadleaf Books, 2021), 76–77, 77–78; and O’Donohue, Beauty, 23, 24.

18/12/2025

A must watch!

A person in pain reacts to the world in pain. A person in peace reacts with peace. That’s why we need to heal so that we do not bleed out on each other. ~ Aviaja Rakel Sani-Muinaq Kristiansen, Inuk Shaman

The Eternal Song is available now to watch by donation. Your gift directly supports Indigenous-led initiatives in the communities where the film was created.

17/12/2025

🍀From Should to Curiosity 🍀

One of my teachers, Stephen Levine, used to say, “Whenever you say ‘should,’ you close your heart.”

Most of us carry around a mental model—a story—of how people ought to live, and then we offer that story to others in the form of a should.
“You should get a job.”
“You should exercise.”
“You should be more like this, less like that.”

We get “should on” all the time, often by well-meaning people who don’t realize they’re placing their story on us.

Of course, life needs rules, agreements, and shared structures. But should carries a particular energy.
Should rarely asks questions.
Should isn’t curious.
Should doesn’t think it has much to learn—because should already knows it’s right.

When we speak from should, the other person becomes someone to convince, not someone to understand.

☘️Curiosity and Should

You might say, “Well, my child should clean his room.”
Maybe. But if our goal is a clean room, does shoulding them get us there?
Or does curiosity — exploring why standards matter, listening for what they need —lead to better outcomes?
Are we building connection with someone or just trying to get our way?

The greatest innovators are often people who question society’s shoulds. They invent and create the future, not just the follow the ways of the past.

☘️Not Shoulding Should
We need to be careful not to think, “You should not use the word should.”

But more to inquire:
💡 How does should show up in your life — toward yourself or others?

💡 What happens in your body when you think or say the word should?

💡 Where is your heart in that moment?

💡We investigate and we learn — not because we should learn, but because we want to learn.***

🍀 Soren Gordhamer, Wisdom 2.0

17/12/2025

This brings back wonderful moments of soul connection with patients and their caregivers during my hospital visits as a volunteer chaplain at the Philippine Children’s Medical Center.🙏🏻💗

16/12/2025

Ways Adults Encourage Behaviors in Children by Nedra Tawwab

10/12/2025

🌸🌺🌼Saying YES to Our Lives🌸🌺🌼

Mirabai Starr recounts how she came to say yes to God in her life as it is instead of how she imagined it should be:

All my life, I have been enamored of the God-intoxicated ones. Those rarified souls who slip into ecstatic states and spontaneously utter poetry. The ones who exude deep stillness, embody equanimity, listen more than they speak. The initiated and the ordained, the monastics…

I wanted to be one of them. Until I didn't.
I want you not to want that as well…

I want you to want to be exactly who you are: a true human person doing their best to show up for this fleeting life with a measure of grace, with kindness and a sense of humor, with curiosity and a willingness to not have all the answers, with reverence for life.

You do not need to chant all night in a temple in the Himalayas. You don't have to be the newest incarnation of Mary Magdalene. It is not necessary to read or write spiritual books. You are not required to know the difference between Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism or memorize the Beatitudes.

All you have to do to walk the path of the ordinary mystic is to cultivate a gaze of wonder and step onto the road. Keep walking. Rest up, and walk again. Fall down, get up, walk on. Pay attention to the landscape. To the ways it changes and the ways it stays the same.

Be alert to surprises and turn with the turning of the seasons. Honor your body, train your mind, and keep your heart open against all odds. Say yes to what is, even when it is uncomfortable or embarrassing or heartbreaking. Hurl your handful of yes into the treetops and then lift your face as the rain of yes drops its grace all over you, all around you, and settles deep inside you.

🌸🌺🌼

Reference:
Mirabai Starr, Ordinary Mysticism: Your Life as Sacred Ground (HarperOne, 2024), 214–215.