Ilchi Lee's Blog, page 21
April 14, 2022
Ilchi Lee’s 6 Ways You Can Live as an Earth Citizen
[Photo by twenty20photos via Envato Elements]
Being an Earth Citizen means taking care of the earth like a loving child takes care of her mother.
Being what I call an Earth Citizen involves one of the highest and biggest forms of love: the love between a mother and child. It’s the love between the earth and all her inhabitants.
In meditation, in connection with my own spirit, I’ve felt the soul of the Earth. I felt the motherly, unconditional love steadily emanating from the Earth’s soul. I was humbled by it while being supported by it. Experiencing and understanding Mother Earth’s love made taking care of her more urgent and vital for me.
As Earth’s most conscious children, we have the ability to choose how we treat her. And how well we take care of her determines our survival, because while her love is unconditional and she gives all she can, natural forces are fair and natural resources take time to replenish.
Then, how can we improve our relationship with Mother Earth?Some of the actions we need to take have to be done collectively, but some we can do individually in our own lives.
Do all the things you can: reduce, reuse, recycle, buy biodegradable products, use renewable energy, eat organic and free range food, plant trees, clean litter, etc. Reduce the impact sustaining human life has on the planet, keep the earth clean, and replenish her resources.Spend time with mom: get away from the electric world and spend time in the natural one—even in your backyard or local park—without your phone or your headphones. Think of the earth mother as you step respectfully and lovingly on her surface.Have compassion and empathy: for those worse off and also those better off than you are. Be tolerant of perceived deficiencies and mistakes in others as well as yourself. Expose yourself to different cultures and people with an open heart and mind.Stay flexible: in body and mind. Be ready to adjust to changing conditions and look for creative solutions. Be able to make new habits that are better for the health of the earth and leave behind rigid ideas that build walls between yourself and other people. Let your mind be free to discover new ways of doing and being.Take care of your health naturally: by eating well, sleeping well, breathing well, and doing energy circulating and accumulating exercises such as these. Keeping your energy healthy helps keep the Earth’s energy healthy because we’re all connected.Trust your true self: the pure and everlasting part of you wants to connect to and love all life, including Mother Earth and her children. Being a “perfect” embodiment of an Earth Citizen may feel unattainable, but if you let your true self be your guide, then the rest of you and your life will resemble that of an Earth Citizen more and more.In this way, being an Earth Citizen, who puts their identity as a filial child of Mother Earth before any other identity, becomes a means of loving yourself and becoming more of who you really are.
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April 11, 2022
[Video] What Is Not Your Brain?
Your head is filled with information. Some of that information can cloud who you really are. If you can discover your true self, you’ll be able to discard false information and make a brain filled with information that supports that self.
What makes up your brain is your choice. You make that choice in every moment. It’s a form of meditation.
Information is also energy. By clearing your energy, you can clear information you don’t want in your brain. Then you can expose your brain to information you need.
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April 7, 2022
Ilchi Lee’s 3 Simple Ways to Revive Your Energy for Spring
Put a fresh spring in your step with some simple yet deep mind-body techniques for energy clearing.
Spring is here and the temperature is gradually rising. Fresh green shoots and spring flowers are making their appearance, making the world seem new.
Just as the earth is refreshing itself after the relative cold and hibernation of winter, we can come alive by cleaning up our internal energy flow.
The qi energy that Eastern medicine says runs through our body moves through channels called meridians. We can think of them like water canals. Canals need to be kept free of debris that blocks the water flow and dirties the water. The water needs to flow freely or else it can’t stay clear and fresh.
There are many ways to shake up and flush out the debris in our energy channels. This process needs to be done daily, but it’s always good to do some deep cleaning every season.
If you’re able to, take a long hike in a natural setting. The energy of nature itself is cleansing and healing and moving your body keeps your energy moving. Walking also help you ground your energy so that more of it, and your mind’s awareness as well, stays in your body. Keeping your mind on your feet as you walk makes this stronger. You can do other activities in nature as well to clean your energy. The important factors are moving your body and paying attention to nature in order to soak up its energy. When we spend enough time in nature, our own energy, which comes from nature, starts to attune to it, resonate with it, instead of to all of the stress, electronics, and thoughts and emotions that normally fill up our modern lives.
Put on high energy music and dance freely.
Use your whole body, make yourself sweat, and tire yourself out. Burn up all the old energy you’ve been carrying around and didn’t even know it. Feel your body as you do it and don’t place any limitation on how you move. Let your body be free to move without your mind’s direction, and it will automatically move in the ways it needs to refresh and re-energize itself. Dance so that your heart and mind opens to welcome new energy and a new consciousness.
Do Solar Energy Circuit Meditation.
All shapes, colors, thoughts, emotions, etc. have a certain energy. That’s why we can use certain shapes and colors to change our energy. One day while meditating, I saw patterns of energy in the sunlight that I’ve decided to call “solar energy circuits.” I experimented with them and discovered that some are useful for cleaning out your energy channels. Try using them yourself by doing the following visualization:
While sitting, standing, or lying down in a quiet spot, relax and straighten your spine. Gently close your eyes. Spend a few seconds breathing deeply to center yourself. Breathe in the energy of the present moment, then exhale the energy of the past and any expectations of the future. Repeat this until your entire body feels comfortable and relaxed.
Then, look at the Clockwise Circuit below and start to connect to it by speaking aloud: “I now attune myself to the energy of the Clockwise Circuit. I call in the energy of the Clockwise Circuit.” Next, repeat the circuit name, “Clockwise Circuit,” to yourself as you imagine a golden-white clockwise spiral coming into your body through the top of your head.
[Clockwise Circuit]
Feel your body and trust that the circuit is passing through you. If you are sensitive enough to energy, you may feel the energy of the circuit. Even if you’re not, you may feel heat, cold, vibration, and various thoughts and emotions, which are all possible effects of stagnant or blocked energy suddenly starting to move.
Don’t try to control the energy flow. Instead, remain detached from anything you notice, simply feeling inside yourself.
Repeat this sequence for the Counterclockwise Circuit below, which will push the stagnant or blocked energy out of your body, especially through your out-breath and your hands and feet.
[Counterclockwise Circuit]
Do this visualization for as long as it takes to feel lighter, more relaxed, more peaceful, and more energized, or at least five to ten minutes.
Solar Energy Circuit Meditation is even more effective after doing other exercises that burn off energy and help you concentrate, such as walking or free dancing.
* Editor’s Note: You can learn more about the solar energy circuits Ilchi Lee saw and teaches in his book, The Solar Body: The Secret to Natural Healing.
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[Video] Live as If You’re Dreaming
Freeing ourselves from the box of our memories, we can realize that our lives are as expansive as a dream. What do you want to dream about? What would you include in your dream world? Let your imagination take you through a world of unlimited potential, and then let your body gradually follow in the world of hard reality.
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March 31, 2022
Why and How We Should Refresh Our Brains
[Photo by twenty20photos via Envato Elements]
We can move forward freely, creatively, peacefully, and productively when we practice clearing the energy our thoughts and emotions.
In the Disney animated film, Frozen, the main character Elsa sings out, “Let it go,” in the now famous song by that title. That phrase captures the essence of the third step of my Brain Education method: Brain Refreshing.
After becoming more sensitive to our bodies, our thoughts and emotions, and especially our energy in the first step (Brain Sensitizing), and then making our bodies and minds more flexible in the second (Brain Versatilizing), we found ourselves in need of relieving ourselves of the burdens and limitations of the past, especially those caused by our own mental and emotional reactions to the events of our lives. No matter how much we may want it, we can’t be peaceful or productive if old traumas or limiting beliefs are holding us back. We inevitably get stuck in the old and cannot fully embrace the new.
Yet, except in moments of perfect peace and clarity, thoughts and emotions are natural parts of our lives. They enrich them and inform how we operate in the world. So to keep our brains fresh, we have to launder our thoughts and emotions continuously. That involves releasing the energy of thoughts and emotions as least as often as we brush our teeth and wash our faces.
Our old thoughts and emotions are contained in our brain in our neural pathways. The older the neural pathway, the stronger it is, and the longer it takes to change it. Brain Refreshing exercises don’t always alter our neural pathways right away. Rather, they change the energy of our thoughts and emotions, leaving us feeling lighter, more relaxed, and more positive. By clearing the energy of our thoughts and emotions every day, we become free of their burdens and free to make new thinking and feeling habits. As our habits change, new neural pathways are forming and old ones are weakening, since neural pathways have a “use them or lose them” nature.
The mind-body-energy exercises used to clear energy in Brain Education also serve to keep the energy inside us moving. The more smoothly and freely our energy flows, the less we get struck in any particular thought or feeling. This leaves us with less that we need to let go.
The techniques also help us separate our mind from our emotions. They allow us to foster an inner observer that can watch thoughts and emotions from a distance. This effect gives us the space and time to choose a response to a particular situation we face that’s aligned with our values and goals. This ability is called emotional intelligence: the ability to assess emotions as they occur, to understand why they are occurring, and to manage their effects in real time. Over time, practicing Brain Refreshing can help us see that emotions only have as much power over us as we give them.
Another benefit of such purification of information, which can sometimes happen all at once, is experiencing complete unification of space and time, with past, present, and future becoming one. We attain a state of complete emptiness yet full awareness. Our consciousness expands while growing deeper. Free of preconceptions and past experiences, we understand much more than we ever have, and can experience a state of genuine peace.
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How to Refresh Our BrainsIt’s best to at least do Brain Refreshing exercises when we first wake up in the morning and then right before bed.
As soon as we open our eyes, before we even get out of bed, we can tap our toes and/or shake our hands for at least a minute. Then we can do various exercises for at least five minutes before we go to sleep.
Unless we purify our stress and negative information before we sleep, it will remain in our unconscious minds and might even appear in our dreams. Then bad memories from one day will continue into into the next, and today’s problems will continue into tomorrow. Instead, we can deal with bad memories immediately and only take good memories with us. Then, when we open our eyes, we can have new hope, goals, and passion, and be able to start our day with vigor.
A good environment helps when we do meditation and mind-body exercises. For example, we can feel a difference between meditation done with meditative music or without it, and between meditation done at home or on a quiet mountainside or in nature. When we are in good energy, our bodies and minds naturally accept that energy. So if it’s possible, we can create a space, even a small area, where we feel good vibes and want to go to practice.
To refresh our brains, we have to focus our minds within ourselves. Focusing inside becomes easier if we can feel the energy of our bodies, as we learn in Step One of Brain Education–Brain Sensitizing. As we do Brain Education exercises, we focus on our energy, which enables the energy clearing and purification process. It also helps our awareness go deeper inside our brains, deeper into a meditative state. Different energy phenomena may appear, in which it truly seems as though your body is completely vanishing.
Brain Refreshing ExercisesGet Bright Breathing
The Joongwan Point
You can do this exercise sitting, standing, or lying down. Start by rubbing your belly and bringing your awareness into your body.Find your Joongwan acupressure point by putting your thumb where your sternum meets your abdomen and putting your pinky on your navel. Bend your middle finger until it touches the imaginary line running vertically down the center of your body, cutting it in half. Where your middle finger rests is the Joongwan point.Then place the middle fingers of both hands on your Joongwan point. Gently and repeatedly press in and out, finding a comfortable rhythm. Exhale through your mouth as you press to let out the stuck energy inside. It’s important to relax your neck, shoulders, and abdomen. Press for about one to two minutes. You can also use the tool I developed for Belly Button Healing to do this.Then use either your two middle fingers or your thumb to press deeply into your abdomen at the Joongwan point until you can feel your pulse inside. (You can also use a tool.) Be careful not to press too hard. It shouldn’t be very painful. If you press with your thumb, put your other hand over the pressing hand to help you have the strength to press deeply enough. Exhale as you press and hold for a count of five.Release the point and inhale as deeply as you can. Hold your breath for a count of five.Repeat steps 4 and 5 for five or ten minutes.Finish with another minute of breathing without pressing your Joongwan.Brain Breathing Exercise
Learn more about Brain Education and its five steps in my books: The Power Brain: Five Steps to Upgrading Your Brain Operating System and Principles of Brain Management: A Practical Approach to Making the Most of Your Brain.
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6 Meridian Exercises for Alleviating Spring Fatigue
[Photo by halfpoint via Envato Elements]
Simple meditative stretches for more energy as the season changes from winter to spring.
People often notice that as the spring season approaches, they are not as energetic as they would like to be. Adherents of Eastern Medicine believe this is due to the fluctuation in the biorhythms of the body. In the wintertime, muscles are contracted, and our qi energy and blood circulation tend to be more constricted. In the change from winter to spring, the organs increase their functioning capacity and need more energy.
Winter can be a time of accumulating the energy we need for the rest of the year. However, if we’re not very active, we may not have enough energy for the increased demand spring brings. This contributes to our feeling more tired in the spring. We may also feel lethargic, even dizzy at times, and we may have less appetite or more digestive problems.
Meridian exercises can help. This type of mind-body exercise combines movement, postures, coordinated breathing, and focusing the mind on the body to stimulate qi energy flow through the energy channels of the body (called meridians). In addition to energy flow, meridian exercises can also increase energy accumulation. Through such techniques, we always have a way of managing our own energy, which forms the basis of health in Eastern Medicine.
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You can also try this 10-Minute Routine for Fatigue on Brain Education TV
*Editor’s Note: Find these exercises and more in Ilchi Lee’s comprehensive book, Meridian Exercises for Self-Healing. Get your copy through this Amazon affiliate link or at your favorite bookseller.
March 17, 2022
Make Hard Work Your Lucky Charm
[Photo by Igor_Tichonow via Envato Elements]
Do your best and let the universe do the rest.
People do many things for luck. We may carry a rabbit’s foot, wish on a shooting star, or do a cheer before a big event. We wish each other luck and have special phrases such as “break a leg.”
I would like to suggest another thing we can do: work hard with sincerity and gratitude.
That idea may seem counterintuitive. After all, luck is literally defined as “the force that causes things, especially good things, to happen to you by chance and not as a result of your own efforts or abilities.” And we know that no matter how hard we work, bad luck can still come our way.
Luck can appear random, yet at the same time, human beings still try their best to get some of it. The things we do for luck are meant to bring out or activate that force in our own favor.
Make the Energy of LuckWhile hard work, sincerity, and gratitude may not cause luck to come our way directly, they do create a mindset that connects with luck’s source, which I believe is the source of life. Sincerity and gratitude are characteristics of the source of life; they’re part of our true nature. When we connect to this source through sincerity and gratitude, life may seem to flow miraculously. Combined with hard work, they also consistently give energy to whatever we’re working toward, and that also makes good things more likely to come our way.
I’ve noticed this in my own life. As an avid golfer, I’ve heard other golfers say that success in the game is 30 percent effort and 70 percent luck. In my younger days, I had trouble believing this saying, but the more I played, the more I found it to be true.
I’ve also heard athletes in other sports as well as entertainers and business people say, “I was lucky,” when asked about their success. However, if you look at their stories, you can see the years of effort and dedication they put into their craft. I believe their hard work made it easier for luck to find them.
That’s why they say, “Do your best, and let the universe do the rest.”
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If You Choose It, It Will HappenLuck factors into one of the five principles of what I’ve dubbed our Brain Operating System (BOS): if you choose it, it will happen. Truly choosing something involves consistency, focus, and effort. It requires not giving up. Then your brain finds solutions to problems, answers to questions, and responses to opportunities. With such focus and drive, both bad luck and good luck can be drawn to us, but ultimately, what we’ve chosen will come to pass.
Some part of our endeavors are up to luck, but just as we’re more likely to help someone who is trying really hard, we’ll get more help if we do as much as we can.
Whatever goal I’ve worked toward brought many obstacles, but in the end, it also brought success. Hard work with sincerity and gratitude is my four-leaf clover.
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Earth Citizens Organization Starts a Ukraine Relief Fund
[Photo by @kellynicol61 via Twenty20]
As part of its drive for a peaceful world in which all people live in harmony with each other and with nature as stewards of the earth, the Earth Citizens Organization (ECO) has begun a new project: Ukraine Relief.
Because of the crisis in Ukraine, ECO feels that help and Earth Citizenship are “needed more than ever.” So it has partnered with supportive organizations to help UNICEF provide immediate humanitarian relief to vulnerable children and families in Ukraine.
UNICEF is providing essential services such as health, education, protection, water and sanitation and sending life-saving supplies.
Although UNICEF has been offering aid to Ukraine over the last eight years of conflict there, the current war is multiplying the need for relief by the hour.
Click here to help now.
March 14, 2022
[Video] It’s Time to Level Up Our Consciousness
In an online lecture in 2021, I shared the importance of coexisting peacefully because I believe that humanity’s current values and systems are leading us on a path to self-destruction. I believe peaceful coexistence can be achieved eventually if we emphasize cooperation and actions that benefit all rather than emphasizing competition between individuals or groups.
However, in order to really do that, each individual would need to clear their energy and make it brighter and lighter. We know we have bright, light energy when we feel joyful, loving, grateful, forgiving, and hopeful. We also have a clear mind with an open heart while being full of vitality. We also gain Water Up, Fire Down energy circulation in which warm energy flows down to our bellies and cool energy flows up to our heads, giving us a cool head and a fire in our gut.
In such a state, how can we not treat each other and the earth with the respect and consideration we all deserve?
Although we need to cooperate and coordinate to make the big changes in economic and political systems that will really make a difference in today’s existential issues, we can start with ourselves. If each of us takes responsibility for our energy condition, we can start to change the conditions of our communities. Through changing our personal decisions, we set the stage to change our community, national, and global decisions.
It starts with changing our energy.
March 10, 2022
Praying for Peace, Choosing Peace
Let’s pray for all the lives being sacrificed for no reason as we work steadily toward a new awakened civilization.
Like many of you, since war broke out in Ukraine, I’ve been praying every night for all the souls that have been lost to the conflict as I comfort and honor them.
Every day now, we are seeing, feeling, and experiencing the history of war in real time. In the midst of a world responding to war, the peace many of us have worked toward for years seems far away. Everything that I’ve been talking about can seem like empty words. It’s at times like these, however, that we need to hold most steadfast to our purpose.
Just as the coronavirus pandemic called us to let our spirit shine, and we found a silver lining in people coming together, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine asks us to come together united for peace.
That’s why I’m once again sharing the Prayer of Peace I wrote and recited for the Millennium World Peace Summit for Religious Leaders at the United Nations in 2000.
The kind of peace I prayed for stems from an awakening of spirit in all people. Through the enlightened consciousness of a significant number of people, we can build new systems and a new civilization that are based on peace and harmonious coexistence that is beneficial for all beings and the earth itself. We can reach a turning point for a new era of peace.
Taking the Path of PeaceLooking carefully at and improving the existing systems would be complicated and difficult. However, this process is how we find the path of peaceful and harmonious coexistence.
Sometimes choosing the difficult path can be lonely. Yet, at the same time, it can be brilliant if it’s the path that makes our spirits shine.
To go down this road, we need strength and resilience—the strength of gwangmyung, a brilliantly bright and pure energy that fills and radiates from us. Making this kind of strength involves building up our physical power so we stay healthy and capable, our heart power so our heart stays open with love and compassion, and our brain power so we can work with clarity and creativity. Having daily a routine of exercise, meditation, and maintaining our inner awareness lets us grow these powers steadily.
Through such a practice, we’re putting our bodies, minds, and emotions through a washing machine that clears away old pains and information and makes room for a brighter existence. It enables us to love ourselves and choose to be humbler, kinder, more forgiving, and more generous.
I hope you can join me on this path as we pray for peace.
The kind of peace I prayed for stems from an awakening of spirit in all people. Through the enlightened consciousness of a significant number of people, we can build new systems and a new civilization that are based on peace and…
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by Ilchi Lee
I offer this prayer of peace
Not to any one god nor to many gods
Not only to a Christian god
Nor only to a Jewish god
Not only to a Buddhist god
Nor only to an Islamic god
And not even to the indigenous gods of many nations
But to the Divinity within that we all hold inside
That makes us all brothers and sisters
Truly One Family
In the name of humanity.
I offer this prayer of peace
To the cosmic Oneness
That is our birthright
And our privilege
And our strength
That should we let it shine and show us the way
Will guide us to the road of peace:
Not a Christian peace
Nor a Jewish peace
Not a Buddhist peace
Nor an Islamic peace
And not even the indigenous peace of many nations
But the human peace
That has a place in the hearts of all people
To allow us to truly fulfill our divine potential
To become the children of one humanity.
I offer this prayer of peace
To allow us all to realize
The truth of our existence
To allow us all to discover
The sanctity of our lives
To allow us all to seek
The spirituality of our beings.
Please allow us to experience
With all our hearts and our souls
The intimate connection to the divine
That we all possess inside
For our bodies are the temples of worship
And our souls the altars
Before which we shall stand tall
And live out the true meaning
Of our existence.
I offer this prayer of peace
To declare a revolution
Of the human spirit.
I wish to announce that
It is now time
For all of us to spiritually awaken
And become enlightened
That the time of the enlightened few is over,
That the age of elitist enlightenment has passed.
For how long shall we wait for prophets
To come down from mountaintops
And tell us what to do?
We must all become enlightened
To recognize our divinity
To raise up our consciousness
And proclaim our independence
From blind reliance on long-ago sages
And find the answers from our own well
Of spiritual wisdom.
We must ourselves become the enlightened ones
We must ourselves realize our Oneness.
I declare that we must all become humans of the Earth
Beyond any religion, nation, or race
But of this Earth, for this Earth, and by this Earth
To create a lasting peace
On Earth.
I offer this prayer of peace
To You the Almighty
The God that lives within all of us
So that we may stand proudly
One day before you
As one humanity.
I offer this prayer of peace
With all Earth Humans
For a lasting peace on Earth.
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