By the Editor

In its second successful year, Ilchi Lee, President of the Global Cyber University in Cheonahn City, South Korea announced that all four-year students of the Global Cyber University will receive a fifty percent scholarship for their dedicated work in the fields of Global Business Management, Human Services, and Korean Cultural Studies. The ‘HongIk’ Scholarship is named in honor of the founding spirit of the University, ‘Hong Ik In Gan Ee Hwa Sae Gae’. The phrase, translated from Korean, means ‘people who provide a wide-benefit for the betterment of the world.’ The university’s founding mission is to create graduates who receive the highest quality education grounded in the guiding principle of serving humanity and the earth as their first priority.

This scholarship will not only apply to entry-level students, but also to current students that are enrolled in their second year of education. Ilchi Lee stated, “Students of the Global Cyber University have a burning passion for study, but many of them are having financial difficulties” as the reason the school is offering the scholarship.

The Global Cyber University had more than the announcement of the Hong Ik Scholarship to celebrate at the event. In December of 2010, they opened the Seoul Academic Center to support offline academic activities. With the opening of the offline academic center, the university was able to secure the status of official cooperation with the International Brain Education Association (IBREA), which is associated with the United Nations Department of Public Information, to support its students’ international activities. IBREA is a non-profit international non-governmental organization headquartered in New York City in the US and in Seoul in South Korea.

About the Global Cyber University
The Global Cyber University, www.global.ac.kr, is one of 13 online universities in South Korea with official recognition from the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology as a 4 year undergraduate university that can grant undergraduate degrees. Seeded in 2004, it opened officially in March of 2010 after five years of planning and development.

I think one of the scariest things is thinking that what you want is impossible, and then giving up and finding something easier to do, or making plans again and again without following through. You just plan do plan do plan do and that’s it. How can you break this cycle?

By waking up with a passionate heart.

That’s how you start Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) and bridge plan and do with check and act..

To maintain your passion for your dream, be grateful for your day every morning when you wake up. Then every day will become new and bright, and you’ll attract the energy to you that you need to achieve your goal. If instead you think, “I can’t do it,” then your energy will be scattered. If you think, “I can do it. I will do it,” then the energy around you will enter your body. That’s how to harness energy for your goal.

So your choice is very important. Don’t judge yourself—“I can’t do this. I can’t do that.” When you make up your mind, you can do anything.

You have a dream and are committed to making it a reality, but that commitment leaves you riddled with anxiety and worry. But your worry just means you care right?

Maybe. But if you keep being anxious or worried, you’ll block new ideas and drain your energy. By worrying and losing your energy, you can fall into depression, and that’s the wrong way to use your brain. Your brain can become paralyzed by anxiety and worry.

So if you really want to do something, don’t worry about it. Worrying is not helpful at all. It just makes your body unhealthy. Instead, do Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA).

Planning involves relaxing and establishing action steps with a clear mind–quite the opposite of worrying. If you have a good plan, then you don’t need to be anxious. You just need to keep checking, revising your plan, and acting on it, and you’ll be able to take the challenges you meet in stride.

Fill all of your time with PDCA and you won’t have time to worry. With commitment to your dream, ask yourself 24-hours a day: “Am I doing PDCA now? Am I planning? Am I doing what I planned? Am I checking? Am I taking action now?” Then you can achieve anything.

Using Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) can be far easier and successful if we can do it with other people. However, meeting someone who really helps one with PDCA, or really motivates one to do PDCA, can be a once in a lifetime stroke of good fortune.

That’s because to help each other requires faith, trust, love, respect, and honesty. It requires putting aside our egos and pride, stripping down our barriers, and facing each other without judgment or bragging. In order to check each other’s progress toward our goals and develop realistic solutions to problems, we need to be able to take constructive criticism gladly and care enough to offer it to someone else.

To cultivate this kind of relationship is difficult because we often interact with each other from our false selves, not the pure heart that lies underneath. We flock to people who are similar to ourselves and don’t stimulate our growth. We also lash out defensively at those who get too close to our insecurities or the things we are unwilling to change.

But we have the ability and responsibility to choose to see the true selves inside us and other people. We just have to believe that it’s there and keep our eyes open. When we can see someone’s true self, we naturally interact with them with faith, love, respect, trust, and honesty. Then we can effectively use PDCA to support each other in achieving our dreams.

After my 100 days of training with ki energy, I still felt empty even though I had built up a lot of energy and had amazing experiences. I was empty because I was still unable to answer the simple question, “Why was I born?” Without an answer, I was just a person capable of playing with energy, nothing more than a technician. What good was it to know that I could survive in freezing temperatures using the power of ki energy if I lacked the answer I had been looking for all my life?

Trying Again
Bemoaning my own ignorance, I returned to Moak Mountain and vowed not to come down until I had an answer to my question. I decided to test my physical and mental endurance by not sleeping for twenty-one days, with only water for sustenance.

I tried everything to stay awake, including sitting at the edge of a sharp cliff, my arms wrapped around the thick branch of a tree, so that the fear of falling would keep me awake. I rolled down the steep mountainside several times as I sat on the edge of a rock in an effort to keep myself from falling asleep

Growing Pains
Towards the end of the first week without sleep, I developed a severe headache of a magnitude I had never experienced. The pain in my eye sockets and my ears was so severe that I could not see or hear. As time went on, my brain seemed to shrivel and begin to deteriorate. My head seemed always on the verge of exploding.

After about two weeks, I knew that I would soon die. I felt a fleeting temptation to sleep, drink, and eat something in order to prolong my life a bit. I would have succumbed to temptation had I not survived the ordeal of freezing in the snow-covered field.

The pain became so severe, that I knew I was beyond saving. I tried to stand on my head and scream with all my might in order to relieve it. Eventually, I gave up.

Bursting Free
Once again, I decided to fully offer myself to the heavens above. As this thought crossed my mind, I felt the world open up before me with a loud boom in my brain. A soothing and refreshing feeling of cool warmth enveloped me. I was beyond my body, free of pain with a mind fully clear.

With an incredible expansion of feeling, I heard a voice cry out from deep within me, “Who am I?!”

The answer came, “I am cosmic energy (chunjikiun in Korean).” My tongue began moving of its own accord, mouthing the phrase, “My energy is cosmic energy, and my mind is the cosmic mind (chunjimaeum in Korean).”

At that moment, with profoundness I cannot describe, I heard the sound of the universe breathing, and it was the sound of my own breathing. I realized that the universe and I are not separate, but one! I knew that I am the stars, the moon, and the sun! When I see other people, I see myself. I became conscious that we are all sharing the same cosmic awareness. This was peace in the ultimate sense of the word, realizing that we are one with all existence.

New Purpose
I soon realized that this illumination, or “enlightenment” for lack of a better word, carries a heavy responsibility. I felt the responsibility of sharing my experience with others. If enlightenment benefits just one individual, what good is it? If Truth revealed to one individual ends there, what good is that Truth? If the power of enlightenment does not change the world, it is without value, not even worth the price of a loaf of bread.

So I decided to test the Truth I’d discovered by attempting to share it with the world. If my enlightenment was real, I could communicate it to others and it would affect them the way it affected me. Thus I had found a way to express my true purpose for this life … to help others to experience the spiritual awakening of inner peace. For enlightenment is peace.

Since then, all of my work–my writing, my speaking, my teaching and training–have all been for this purpose.