Ilchi Lee's Blog, page 49

Do You Know the Flea Story?

Many people live repetitive lives without change or growth, today always the same as yesterday. They no longer dream. And they no longer challenge themselves to do anything beyond their comfort zone. Lethargy, depression, anxiety, isolation, frustration, a sense of inferiority, and a negative attitude slowly eat away at their brains. 

The real issue here is that they have failed to identif...

Peace in the Brain Conference at the United Nations

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Last week, on Thursday, August 8, 2019 from 10 AM – 3 PM EDT, the nonprofit IBREA Foundation that Ilchi Lee founded held a conference on creating peace in the brain at the United Nations headquarters in New York, New York.

The conference included presentations about mental health and a panel discussion on developing a peaceful brain and, by extension, peaceful communities. It was based on the premise that, although we strive to resolve conflicts in our communities and the world at large, violence also rages inside us. As the event description addressed: “This kind of violence continues to create tension and conflict everywhere, and results in issues such as discrimination, domestic violence, work conflict, and other everyday issues that make our society conflictive, and prevent us from real problem-solving.  Peace-building must address functional structures, but it must also address emotional conditions, and cultural or other sensitivities.”

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Panelists and speakers included Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg, a Clinical Professor of Neurology at New York University School of Medicine and author of The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind; Dr. Joseph Ledoux, a neuroscientist at New York University and author of The Emotional Brain; Dr. Nina Urban, an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University and a member of the UN Committee on Mental Health; Dr. Linda R. Tropp, Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst;Collette Hemmings, an IBREA Foundation board member and executive at Nike, Inc.; Isabel Pastor Guzman, Program Director at IBREA Foundation and Editor-in-Chief of Brain World magazine; Grecia Valenzuela Portillo, Program Manager of the IBREA Foundation branch in El Salvador, and Linda Yoonjin Suh and Gabryelle Petrylaite, hosts of Brain Education TV.

The conference coincided with IBREA Foundation’s annual World Peace Leadership (WPL) program, a nine-day program that teaches youth to be active peace leaders through Brain Education. WPL participants, who came from around the United States and South Korea, had the opportunity to visit different missions at the United Nations, in addition to attending the conference. They also engaged in workshops and team building activities at IBREA Foundation’s Harlem Brain Center and at Honor’s Haven Resort and Spa in Ellenville, New York.

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Other conference participants included three educators from El Salvador, local Body & Brain Yoga and Tai Chi members and instructors, and members of the United Nations missions and NGOs.

The conference was co-sponsored by the El Salvador mission to the UN. In her presentation, Grecia shared her experiences with Brain Education in El Salvador, including how it has helped communities release and manage trauma from gang violence and build a new path forward. Ilchi Lee was awarded the José Simeón Cañas Slave Liberator Order in September last year for Brain Education’s benefit to El Salvador.

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Get a peek at the event and more in Brain Education TV’s vlog about it.

Established as a nonprofit in the United States in 2008, the IBREA FOUNDATION is commited to raising awareness of the great value of the human brain and to unleashing its capacity to create the world we all wish to see. With its Consultative Status with the United Nations ECOSOC (Economic and Social Council), IBREA Foundation’s vision is to contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals by helping individuals and communities take responsibility for their health, stability, and peace through the holistic education and training system of Brain Education.

Do You Know the Flea Story?

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Many people live repetitive lives without change or growth, today always the same as yesterday. They no longer dream. And they no longer challenge themselves to do anything beyond their comfort zone. Lethargy, depression, anxiety, isolation, frustration, a sense of inferiority, and a negative attitude slowly eat away at their brains.

The real issue here is that they have failed to identify the cause of their problems accurately. Usually, instead of looking carefully within, they simply blame their situation and the people around them, negating their own power to find a solution. They neither try to see it clearly nor attempt to find the will to improve. At some point, they find themselves becoming spectators to their own lives. No one ever starts out stuck in a rut, but sometimes negative experiences turn into a pattern of learned helplessness.

When hopelessness and negativity become the norm, people are no different from the flea in the following story:

A flea was caught in a glass jar covered with a transparent lid. The flea jumped as hard and high as he could, but he hit the cover every time and was hurled to the bottom of the jar by the impact. Over time, the flea learned how to jump without getting hurt. He would jump only to a safe height, not touching the lid, before dropping again. Later, after the lid was removed, the flea continued to jump only to that same safe height. He kept jumping only as high as he could to keep from crashing into the lid, mistakenly believing that it was still there.

We may be like this flea. To keep from getting hurt, do you also keep jumping only to the same height as before, sticking to the same predictable routine?

—Taken from my recent book, Connect: How to Find Clarity and Expand Your Consciousness with Pineal Gland Meditation

Poem: The New Human Look

This poem came to me as I meditated recently. It's a picture of an ideal human, a human who can create a beautiful life and a beautiful world. What is your picture of a New Human Look?


With a face that does not lose its rapturous delight and smile
With arms elegant as a crane
With a heart that is euphoric as a dragon holding a mystical pearl in its mouth
With legs strong and sturdy as a cr...

Poem: The New Human Look

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This poem came to me as I meditated many years ago. I was recently reminded of it and wanted to share it again. It’s a picture of an ideal human, a human who can create a beautiful life and a beautiful world. What is your picture of a New Human Look?

With a face that does not lose its rapturous delight and smile

With arms elegant as a crane

With a heart that is euphoric as a dragon holding a mystical pearl in its mouth

With legs strong and sturdy as a crane

With a back intrepid as a tiger

And a neck that looks as graceful as a deer

Your gaze pierces through the distant, vast expanse

With such beautiful eyes that envision an ideal and a dream

Your head radiates luminous wisdom

Your demeanor is that of a crane flying through the clouds

Your heart is on fire like the heart of a lion

Your hands are beautiful hands

That heal the pain and suffering of the people of the world

Your feet are like the hooves of a swift steed

That does not tire even from racing a thousand miles

In your heart, you cherish a higher cause, and your gaze is fixed on the vision

Your face is brimming with ease and confidence

As your whole body surges with powerful strength.

The 3 Rights of Every Human Being

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Every human being has three rights. However, these rights are not guaranteed, and no one can give them to you. A right is something you need to endeavor to achieve. But it’s also something that needs to be respected. Everyone should have the opportunity to achieve them. All the systems in the world, such as religions and nations, have the obligation to encourage these basic rights. Then we can create a good and better family and society.

What might these rights be? The first one is health. Once you are born, you have a right to be healthy. Is there anything more important than health? Even if you have wealth and fame, does it matter if you don’t have health? Health is the foundation of all happiness, and it’s also the foundation of all peace.

Happiness is our second right. We all want to be happy, right? But everyone’s happiness is different. What may make me happy may not make you happy. You don’t have to take other’s happiness as yours. All you have to do is you feel happiness in yourself. We are at the center of our own happiness and health.

What could our third right be? You may have guessed that it’s peace. You have to strive your best to find your peace. No one will bring peace to you. Individual peace, the peace of a family, a country, or a company is something you create. That’s why, who is at the center of your own health, happiness, and peace? You are.

Own Your Brain, Own Your Rights

Although we all have the right to health, happiness, and peace, most of us don’t take ownership of them. Even if we experience health, happiness, or peace in a particular moment, we don’t own them fully. We are spectators of our health, happiness, and peace. An external force can come along anytime and take them away, because we don’t know how to create them. In this way, we are not masters of our health, happiness, and peace.

To be a master of our health, happiness, and peace, we need to be masters of our brain. When that happens, our lives become art. Life is an art. Each of our lives is a masterpiece we create.

However, if we don’t create it consciously, it gets created for us. Our current circumstances, our history, our emotions, and our social norms act as our brain’s master, determining our thoughts and behaviors. To create unconditional health, happiness, and peace, then, we need to take back our brain from all of these forces.

So many people have lost their connection to their own brains. They are just living their life following their own routine, keeping busy as time passes by. So the question is, how are you spending your time? With what kind of mindset, what kind of purpose, and what kind of value in yourself are you going through life? Ask yourself, am I really living for my own health, happiness, and peace? And what can I do, what am I really doing for that?

And what am I doing for my family’s health, happiness, and peace? And if we expand our awareness a little bit more, what am I doing for the health, happiness, and peace of my community and society? And if our consciousness and awareness have grown more, let’s go beyond the level of society, nation, or any organization. How am I living my life for the health, happiness, and peace of the entire planet and all humankind? Because, in essence, we and all others are one and the same.

If you are the center of your health, happiness, and peace, and that of your family, society, and the Earth, then the first thing you can do to master these rights is connect with your inner center—your true self. Once you find your true self, you can grow yourself from there.

Speak the Language of Energy

How can you really connect with yourself? As I explain in more detail in my new book, Connect: How to Find Clarity and Expand Your Consciousness with Pineal Gland Meditation, you can communicate with yourself through feeling energy.

Although it’s possible to feel the energy in your whole body, it’s easiest to start with your hands. Focusing on your hands helps your brain to focus.

Try closing your eyes and focusing on your hands. Your brain will become one with your hands. If you are really focused, you can feel a sense of heat/electricity in your hands. This is a feeling of energy. Feeling this energy in your hands is a very important foundation. If you can feel energy in your hands, that means you will be able to feel it in your whole body.

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Now raise your hands up and stretch open your palms as far as you can, and then relax. Once again, stretch more and more. Then relax. And stretch one last time, and relax all the way.

Then rotate your hands like a propeller. Keep your hands relaxed in order to really spin them hard. Shake your hands for one minute, until you feel your body getting warmer.

Now how do your hands feel? Can you sense magnetism between your hands and fingers? Can you feel the wind in your hands?

If you can feel this energy, then you can manage and control energy, and consequently, your health, happiness, and peace. Energy is the connection between your brain and body. Having health, happiness, and peace depends on having proper energy flow in your body.

That’s why, as you feel the energy in your hands, you may notice changes happening in your body. Even if you don’t feel anything, that is also a feeling. That’s fine. If you feel something, that is also a feeling. What matters is that now your brain is aware of the feeling. That’s how you can converse with your brain.

The more you focus, though, the stronger your feeling becomes. If you just sit quietly and cannot really focus, you’ll have many distracting thoughts coming into your mind. But when you really focus, you’ll have no thoughts. You won’t have any sadness or loneliness. All social titles and authority disappear. There’s only one thing left. If you are really focused, you can have the greatest gift you can have. All else disappears. Only your self exists. That is what we call your true self.

Find Yourself, Love Yourself

Just like you focused on your hands, to find and develop your true self, you have to focus inside and observe. When you watch your inner workings, your brain starts to ask, “Who am I?” You have to keep asking yourself this question. Only then can you find yourself.

Finding your true self is how you can take back your own brain. Your true self can take ownership of your brain once you are aware of it and focus on it.

But to really take back your brain, you can’t stop with just finding your true self. You have to listen to it and act on what it says. Action is the key. You have to move. And through action, synapses are connected in your brain. They grow stronger the more you take action.

What’s important is your passion and your will. If they stay strong and consistent, you can truly become the master of your life forever. That is what I think loving yourself is.

Loving yourself means taking back your brain to create your own health, happiness, and peace.

The 3 Rights of Every Human Being

Every human being has three rights. However, these rights are not guaranteed, and no one can give them to you. A right is something you need to endeavor to achieve. But it’s also something that needs to be respected. Everyone should have the opportunity to achieve them. All the systems in the world, such as religions and nations, have the obligation to encourage these basic rights. Then we...

The Three Rights of Every Human Being

Every human being has three rights. However, these rights are not guaranteed, and no one can give them to you. A right is something you need to endeavor to achieve. But it’s also something that needs to be respected. Everyone should have the opportunity to achieve them. All the systems in the world, such as religions and nations, have the obligation to encourage these basic rights. Then we...

Ilchi Lee’s New Connect Audiobook Now Available

Ilchi Lee’s recently released book, Connect: How to Find Clarity and Expand Your Consciousness with Pineal Gland Meditation, is now available as a audiobook. It can be streamed or downloaded on major audiobook sites such as Audible, Amazon, and iTunes.

Connect reminds people that the most important thing they can do for themselves is connect. In particular, feel their body, be aware of their soul, and open up to the divine aspect in their brain. When they do this, they can be secure in themselves while empathizing with others. Even more, they can have the clarity and action power they need to face anything that comes their way.

To get an idea about the audiobook, which is read by Andrew Start, listen to this sample:

You can learn more about Connect on its official website, ConnectbyIlchi.com.

Ilchi Lee's New Connect Audiobook Now Available

Ilchi Lee's recently released book, Connect: How to Find Clarity and Expand Your Consciousness with Pineal Gland Meditation, is now available as a audiobook. It can be streamed or downloaded on major audiobook sites such as Audible, Amazon, and iTunes.



Connect reminds people that the most important thing they can do for themselves is connect. In particular, feel their body, be aware of...