All the stories in the world are in the first, second, or third person. At this time it’s the first person that is important. Now it’s not the saint, martyr, or great hero who is the protagonist. It is the “I.” It is you.

Many people tend forget how important they are. Instead, others are always emphasized. You live for your family and your country. Although it may seem noble, this emphasis on others is a value of a purely material civilization.

However, an era of spiritual enlightenment is not a time of him or her or them. It’s a time in which the self is important and you create you. You have to exist in order for there to be a him or her or them—even the country and the earth. In each of us exists everything else. If I exist then you and he and she can exist—that is enlightenment.

Before now we’ve studied so much about others but did not consider loving ourselves and interacting with ourselves to be as important. However, each of us is at the center of everything. We are each important and should value ourselves as such. Value is not something given to you by others but something you create.

The world’s problems are not going to be solved by a he or she, but by an I. You are standing at the center of history in 2012. But what will you choose? If you choose it, it will come true. What creates history is millions of choices. For the future of humanity, there is work we must do and this work is done in the first person.

By the Editor

The Call of Sedona: Journey of the Heart by Ilchi Lee was listed as number two in the Paperback Advice & Misc. section of The New York Times best seller list for February 26, 2012. It also recently reached number four on The Washington Post Best Seller list for paperback nonfiction and was included on the USA Today and IndieBound bestseller lists. Ilchi Lee is the first Korean to be listed on four bestseller lists simultaneously.

These sales were boosted by the concerted effort of the book’s author and its publisher, BEST Life Media, in partnership with Dahn Yoga & Health, Inc. and Dahn Yoga’s Body + Brain Center franchises. They were also the result of the efforts of over 300 meditation circles based on the book.

Ilchi Lee has engaged in a nationwide book signing tour for the past two months that saw about a thousand people attend and buy approximately 1500 books on the spot.

BEST Life Media also ran a Getaway to Sedona Giveaway through Hasmark Services from February 5th through February 11th. They offered three Sedona Getaways, five Experience Sedona Gift Certificate Packages, and a Personalized Calligraphy Artwork by Ilchi Lee as prizes. There were almost 840 entries to the Giveaway, in which entrants could participate in a live teleseminar with Ilchi Lee and receive bonuses from over 100 partners.

During the Giveaway period, meditation circle leaders around the country ran book talks and demonstrations of the ideas and techniques in The Call of Sedona at their local bookstores.

A week before the Giveaway, The Call of Sedona App was released for iOS and Android platforms. The app’s audio meditations, Sedona landscape images, videos, and inspirational messages bring the user to Sedona wherever they are and allow them to sample the Sedona spirit Ilchi Lee writes about in the book. For the Giveaway, the app was discounted from $2.99 to 99 cents by its developer, Infinity Brain.

While set in Sedona, The Call of Sedona is not a book just for fans of the area. “My hope is that by reading this book people will gain a fresh inspiration and a dream that will infuse vitality into their life, that they will take part in the beautiful dream Sedona gives through its profound connection with the earth,” Ilchi Lee said. “No matter where you are you can discover meaning and hope in life through a true encounter with yourself. As people come to love themselves more they come to love other people and the world more deeply. Each of us can make this world a better place.”

Lee donates 30 percent of his royalties from the sale of his book to three Sedona area charities: Camp Soaring Eagle, Yavapai Big Brother Big Sisters and the Sedona Community Center.

We’ve come to this earth and someday we’ll leave it. It’s already set. We’re not getting younger and we’ll continue to age. The earth will continue to spin and revolve around the sun carrying all life. Compared to the earth, we’re smaller than a piece of dust. We’re such tiny tiny beings. In fact, if you were only to look at size there would be no meaning to our existence.

The earth itself does not regard human activities. To the earth, humans are as people regard ants. To humans, a queen ant isn’t any more special than any other ant. Human beings are rampant so they are not very important. That’s the enlightenment of knowing you are human.

However, our value is not determined by our size. Our soul determines our value. The earth has a soul and we have a soul. When it comes to the soul—everything is at the same level. Your soul has the same value as the earth’s soul. When you connect with your soul and recognize that your soul has the same value as that of the earth, you can interact with the earth and the creative force of the universe and realize your nature is eternal.

Just as the earth has an orbit, each of us has our own track for our life. We have to know the work we have to do within the providence of this universe. People become so desirous of and dependent on so many different titles. But do we know what’s really important? Do you know for what you should live? It doesn’t matter whether you’re the queen ant or not. What matters is knowing what your soul wants and acting on it.

Why did your soul come to the earth? Because the twenty-first century earth desperately wanted it. You were called here and answered that call. That’s why you are a blessing to the earth.

This year, 2012, is a time when everyone will have a personal experience of their soul, live for their soul, and, in the process, create a new spiritual civilization. So many people have been in suffering and pain. Every day, 16,000 children are dying from starvation. The answer to the world’s pain is enlightenment. Finding your soul and trusting and believing in yourself—that is enlightenment.

In a moment of enlightenment on Moak Mountain thirty-three years ago, I saw two futures set forth before humanity. One future showed humankind suffering tragically amid natural disasters, war, and illness. Another future showed all people and nature existing in good health, happiness, and peace. There was such an intense contrast between the wretchedness and beauty that, in that moment, the recognition that the fate of humanity was my fate bored into my heart. No one has ever asked or ordered me to dedicate myself to creating a future of happiness and peace for all humanity, but that became my mission.

Then sixteen years ago, as I sat meditating at the top of Bell Rock, the message of the earth came to me again. I felt a powerful column of energy and light shoot out from the ground beneath me, move up my spine, through my brain, and then out the top of my head. Suddenly, it felt as though the boundaries of my body had disappeared completely and I had become part of the light shaft itself. My consciousness traveled down the shaft at a lightning speed as though I were in an elevator. Suddenly, I found myself in a space filled with crystals of every description.

I was gazing, awestruck, captivated by the crystals that shone in rainbow colors while they moved amid sparkling, flying particles of light, when a beautiful woman appeared before me. She had long, black hair that cascaded down to her waist and deep, black eyes; it was difficult to ascertain her age. She introduced herself as Sena, the goddess who protected Sedona and who was the daughter of Mago, or Mother Earth. Sena told me that she had invited me because she had a message for me: “Deliver the heart of the earth to humanity!”

As she said those words, the entire space was imbued with the sound of her voice, which continued to reverberate endlessly. In that space, I felt the deep, deep love of the mother who has constantly been with us since before we were born combined with her anguished concern for the future of the earth and humanity. My heart was filled with a sense of mission that I must allow all people to feel both Mother Earth’s anguish and her love.

In order not to forget the energy and message that I experienced on Bell Rock that day, I constructed a building that would send vortex energy to the whole world in a location where Sedona’s four major vortexes meet, and I turned the room in that building that offers the best view of Bell Rock into a Crystal Room. Over the course of several years, I collected crystals of various sizes, shapes, and colors and filled the space with them. I even made the ceiling octagonal so that it would be harmonious with the energy of the crystals. And I resolved to launch a website when the Crystal Room was completed that would convey Mago’s message to humanity through the flow of the earth’s vortexes and the crystals’ energy.

However, it took a period of 16 years until I encountered the most important crystal for completing the Crystal Room. Last year, at a lecture in Chicago on November 19th, I conveyed the power and responsibility we all have to choose humanity’s future by declaring January 1, 2012 as the beginning of an era of spiritual culture. About a month after making that choice, and a month before the New Year, I discovered a rare and unique aquamarine crystal. Aquamarine is a crystal that heals all crystals; it is the most mystical mineral on the earth, and it is called the light of divinity. The specimen, which I eventually bought, consists of bright blue shafts of hexagonal crystal growing out of the frontal and temporal lobes of a white feldspar base that is shaped like a human brain. I encountered this aquamarine through a special connection I like to think of as a fated relationship. Now it shines as a symbol of divinity in the center of the Crystal Room, watched over by one hundred or so other crystals. The Crystal Room has been completed.

Now is the time for all the souls who love humanity and are concerned for the future of the earth to connect and take action together. The time has come for all souls to awaken to their oneness, interact with the energy of divinity, and share divine love. In keeping with my resolve, I will officially launch a new website, LifeParticleTV.com, on March 1st. It is a place where everyone will have the opportunity to meet with the light of divinity and the vortex energy of Sedona contained in the Aquamarine. Through LifeParticle TV, humanity will hear Mago’s message and begin to create a new Era of Spiritual Civilization.

You were born in these times because the 21st century earth wanted you desperately. If this message resonates with your inner self, then you are already enlightened. Right now, if you are dreaming of a world where humans live in harmony with each other and with nature, where all people act according to their conscience, and where the values of love, coexistence, communication, and peace emanate from inside everyone, then that world will begin from inside you.

[Editor's Note: Although LifeParticleTV.com's official launch date is March 1, 2012, which will include a streaming broadcast, the website already hosts videos and free downloads you can enjoy now.]

Though I am now traveling around the United States doing events for my latest book, The Call of Sedona: Journey of the Heart, I am still sending LifeParticles to everyone through the “Crystal Palace” I built in Sedona, Arizona. It’s an octagonal room filled with crystals I’ve been collecting over the 15 years or so I’ve lived in Sedona.

Last December I finally found the crystal that completed the room, and in the beginning of January I managed to buy it and place it on a pedestal in the center of the room beneath a pointed skylight in the ceiling. I had seen this crystal when in deep meditation, and received the message that the room would not be complete without it.

The crystal is a rare and precious specimen of aquamarine. Unlike most mined aquamarine, the several clear blue shards are still attached to their feldspar base. When I first saw it, I knew it was the aquamarine I needed. The energy that vibrates from it is pure LifeParticles like that of the soul of the Earth and the soul of every human being. So I named the crystal the Soul of Mago.

The Soul of Mago Aquamarine Crystal

The Soul of Mago has inspired a new project—LifeParticleTV.com. From this website, I will send LifeParticles from the vortexes in Sedona through light, sound, and messages. It’s the next step in the story I tell in The Call of Sedona—a story of my quest to share Mago’s message of peace and harmony, and to help everyone realize they have a great and everlasting soul in their hearts that will guide them to happiness and fulfillment through caring for themselves, other beings, and the Earth itself.

All of that can be accomplished if we start by regularly practicing breathing, meditation, and awakened, or benevolent, living. One simple meditation uses the strong, purifying power of the Soul of Mago aquamarine. All crystals are associated with certain properties, and aquamarine is closely associated with the characteristics of water: purity, clarity, healing, love, life-giving, encompassing, accepting, compassion, flexibility, variety, freedom, openness, fearlessness, sensitivity, responsiveness, balance, harmony, and completion. By focusing on an image of the Soul of Mago, especially its aqua blue color, you can experience these characteristics. Most people especially experience a light but profound sense of peace by meditating on this aquamarine.

The Soul of Mago embodies the spiritual civilization we all can create in 2012, and it is a tool I’m sharing with you to help you create the consciousness you need to achieve it. Now is the time to express the greatness we hold inside.