The mountains are deep and the waters, high.
The general’s arms are thin and the child’s legs, thick.
A dragon of a thousand years is eaten by a mudfish.
That full moon there by the crescent moon—
when did it begin shining on the earth?
If anyone should ask what this means,
say that the baby runs and the adult crawls.
Everything authoritarian goes, making way for what is new.
Material civilization goes and spiritual civilization returns.
Did you know that there are three gates you need to pass to reach enlightenment? These three gates lead from one to the other. Would you like to know what they are?
1. Love yourself.
Loving yourself is the most basic thing, though many of us are focusing on the world around us so much that we forget to give ourselves the love that we need. When we love ourselves, loneliness disappears. People who are not able to love themselves cannot love others, either. And people who are not happy are unable to give happiness to others. People who have no peace inside are not able to share peace. All of these things are not things that you learn. But so many people have lost or forgotten these basic things in their lives.
There are many self-help books and techniques available that teach us how to love ourselves; but really we can do it by simply feeling our body. Why don’t you try it? If you think about it, whenever we want to know something better, we first reach out with our hands. With your hands, touch your body—your arms, your legs, your shoulders, your feet. Focus on the sensations in your body. The moment that you really feel your body, all extraneous thought is put on hold. While you have all these scattered thoughts, you cannot fully feel your body. By being attentive to your body, you can really get to know your body as a first step to getting to know yourself.
Another way of saying, “Feel your body,” is, “Feel your life.” Feel the life that flows inside you by quieting your thoughts and focusing on your real physical presence. If you feel yourself, from there you can feel peace, happiness, and gratitude. Meeting yourself this way is a really great and true method of meditation. Try doing it twice a day, every day, for at least five minutes, and take the time to express love for yourself.
2. Value yourself.
Your value is not based on a grade you get in school or how you are evaluated by the world around you. Your value is the worth you recognize inside yourself. If you cannot acknowledge your own worth, and always rely on other people’s evaluation, you tend to be nervous and anxious, and you may feel very small. But before you can value yourself, you need to love, acknowledge, and accept yourself. That is why it’s the second gate. Tell yourself, “I am me. I am me,” and know that you are precious. Once you discover your own value, you’ll want to put it into practice, and that’s when it’s time to go through the third gate.
3. Trust yourself.
Once you recognize and accept your own value, you can develop trust in yourself, and then you’ll always have something called hope. And that’s what enables you to concentrate and develop creative power. If you can’t trust yourself, if you can’t believe in yourself, and you can’t respect yourself, how would you be able to concentrate on what you’re doing? But if you trust yourself, you can focus on what you do with joy and excitement. Then naturally you will be successful and you can create the life you want. You can generate peace, abundance, and caring in your life and in the world. But it all starts with the kind of relationship you build with yourself. When you love yourself, and value yourself, and trust yourself, you can design a new future for your own life. And that’s when you can say, “My life is mine.” That’s when you can be the master of your life. And that is enlightenment.
How can you recover a sense of humanity? How can you have self-esteem, restore your conscience, and become healthy and hard-working? The way to attain these three things and the way to restore your humanity is by creating healthy energy circulation in your body. If you create Water Up Fire Down, and allow your physical energy to accumulate until it purifies your emotions and brightens your spirit, the conscience of your True Self will naturally be revealed and you will have the action power to actualize your principles in real life. When you achieve a state of Water Up Fire Down, your body reaches a normal state, and your mind automatically becomes healthy and peaceful. You develop a natural desire to help others—you become a Hong Ik human. All of these things happen simply because they are principles of energy. It happens naturally.
And these energy principles are the way to achieve completion of your soul. First you need to find it inside yourself and make it your true master. You must install your soul completely as the master of your brain and your heart. Then self-esteem and conscience will follow. If you have self-esteem and conscience, you come to take care of your body and love it, and you exercise a healthy and hard-working lifestyle for yourself.
All of the Brain Education methods I’ve developed over the years were designed to recover your humanity by creating Water Up Fire Down and uncovering your True Self. But the simplest and most powerful method I’ve recently developed is a special form of Brain Wave Vibration I call Younggamudo. Like all forms of Brain Wave Vibration, when doing Younggamudo you move freely until the rhythm of life, of your True Self, flows out of you and moves your body. But I’ve designed specific music to follow that will help you open your chakras and create Water Up Fire Down energy circulation in your body more easily. The music uses drums, bells, and gongs to open your energy channels and balance and strengthen your chakras. It’s so easy.
These principles of energy are the key to recovering our humanity and creating a true state of welfare in which each person is empowered and happy.
You probably remember the news about the atrocious massacre committed by a religious fanatic in Norway. This right-wing extremist himself declared that he was not a person but a huge monster. Dogmatic conviction gone wrong made him lose his humanity and turned a human being into a slave of information.
Norway is the country that awards the Nobel Peace Prize; there are no religious or social disputes, the happiness quotient of its people is among the highest in the world, and it is praised as the model of an exemplary advanced welfare nation. However, through this incident, we can see how incomplete and precarious welfare can be when it has not fully restored a sense of humanity.
Welfare that doesn’t restore a sense of humanity is incomplete and does not have the potential to last. Even the welfare of northern Europe, envied by people around the world, stays in material limitations and the pursuit of equality. With welfare that cannot restore a sense of humanity, the happiness of all people cannot be achieved, and an era of spiritual civilization and true peace cannot come about.
Restoring a sense of humanity requires three factors:
True welfare actualizes all of these things.
People who are hard-working and live healthy lives with strong self-esteem and conscientiousness are able to accomplish anything and tend to be liked by everyone. They can live with confidence and self-assurance, and aim for unshakeable happiness.
Sometimes self-esteem can be confused with arrogance. But self-esteem comes from the essential being (True Self), while arrogance comes from emotion. Self-esteem comes from being centered in your higher self, and arrogance comes from being centered in others. People who have good self-esteem are not swayed or hurt by what others say, but those who are arrogant are easily influenced and hurt, and are always self-conscious. Positive self-esteem comes from self-assurance and comes with a philosophy.
Self-esteem allows you to live with conscience. If you have a strong conscience and strong self-esteem, rather than accepting the value given to you by the world, you can discover your own value, an absolute value independent of outside variables.
Self-esteem and conscience are the LifeParticle Sun, the source of the life energy of the universe. Self-esteem, conscience, and a healthy and hard-working lifestyle—with just these three factors, anyone can be happy. That happiness has the potential to last. It’s a happiness that is complete.
I went to Lake Powell recently, my favorite place for meditation, for the first time in a long time. At Lake Powell, the mystery of the earth lives and breathes, and its primeval beauty is preserved unchanged.
There, I could exist as nature itself, as an Earth Human. The earth’s message came into my soul as if in a dream. This is the message I heard.
Dreaming at Lake Powell
Beneath a blue sky, a lake of emerald,
red rocks like painted screens
with various beautiful, majestic faces
surround me.
Here I stand in Pace Canyon,
a place of indescribable
mystery and divine sacredness.
I lie in the lake.
The lake is me, and it is a very big bed.
In the beautiful sky,
and in each mysterious, majestic screen of rock,
I see extraordinary forms and images like sculpture.
How long has it been
since I last forgot myself and merged with nature like this?
The moment I became Nothingness,
I spread my wings and took flight through the sky,
liberated from the various
memories and emotions tied to this world.
When I met a cloud, I became a cloud,
when I met the wind, I became the wind,
when I met a mountain, I became a mountain,
when I met a rock, I became a rock,
when I met a flower, I became a flower,
and when I met a butterfly, I became a butterfly.
I soar up into heaven and become ten thousand things.
This moment, how long has it been
since I last returned to the origin of all life?
Leaving the human body
and returning to nature in its purest form
I reach a state of freedom,
not bound to any place in this world.
Here, there are no gods, nations, success,
differentiation between you and me,
or the discernment of good and evil
spoken of in the human world.
There is solely the seat of the Tao,
the one place to which everything ultimately returns.
I feel my physical body.
My heart is beating.
A physical body without a soul is incomparably lonely.
Should I remain here,
or should I go back to my body?
The choice, of course, is mine.
The reason I came to the earth
is because the 21st century earth
wanted me desperately.
For the earth who is all alone
and human beings who have lost their direction,
shouldn’t I give everything of myself if it is needed?
Let us bring about a world of spiritual completion,
and herald an era of spiritual civilization,
to form a world where all people are happy.
With the true spirit of Bokji Daedo (the Great Way of Welfare),
let us create a path of complete welfare.
Herein lies the reason why I was born on this earth.
If this is my destiny,
I must go to the end of the path, no matter how harsh and difficult it may be.
Of all the life in this world, human beings are the most precious.
Now I must return to my physical body that awaits me,
and fulfill my destiny and my mission.
And if it means that I can save humanity and this earth,
I choose the path of hardship once again.
