Ilchi Lee's Blog, page 70

Know What You Want to Change

If you feel that you have shortcomings, that’s not a bad thing. That feeling means you have a desire to change and grow.

People who have given up on growth are unaware of their shortcomings and are simply complacent. They are not free; they are living in the dark.

Don’t avoid the feeling that you have something you want to change. Don’t be afraid to face your obstacles.

Look at each situation squarely with courage. Keep your eyes wide open and your mind in your center at the zero point.

Then find a way to move forward. All you have to do is change.

Always create your life with a spirited, joyful, and brightly shining mind. Put a smile on your face and remember that change is natural.

 

Ilchi Lee

 

New Rules for a New Brain

Since my arrival in Sedona last week, many messages have been coming down to me from the universe early every morning, and they have provided a new explanation of what I have described as the Brain Operating System or BOS. The Brain Operating System is a way of comparing your brain to a computer. Its cells are the hardware, and its thoughts, ideas, and functions are the software. Your brain’s operating system is how you can consciously run your brain’s software. When you are aware of the laws of how the operating system works, the running of your whole brain and all of its functions, not just your thoughts, goes from unconscious to conscious.

Previously, I had talked about three laws of BOS. But now I am aware of five laws. They are:

1. Wake up and pay attention!

2. Good news makes a good brain.

3. Choose. If you choose it, it will happen.

4. Become the master of time and space.

5. Design all circumstances!

Everything starts with waking up and paying attention. Waking up and pulling yourself together means recovering your spirit and recovering the zero point—going back to your center, from which you can see everything clearly without bias and from which the life energy that flows through everything in the universe comes forth. From your center, you have a deep sense of truth and what you need to do to express that truth.

If you wake up and get it together and repeatedly tell your brain a lot of good news often, even if it’s something small, your brain will become a “good brain.” It will be clearer, more creative, more positive, and more productive. It’s all about practice. Tell yourself how wonderful you are and how many things you can do well. Surround yourself with information of other people being happy, healthy, successful, giving, and loving. The more good news like this that you give your brain, the more your life will reflect this positive reality.

From the zero point, with your brain working at its best, make your choices. If you make a choice with conviction and action, it’s only natural for your choice to manifest.

Take advantage of every moment to fulfill your choice. Make a plan and goal for each day, and don’t detour from your goal for even a second. Remember that you are a valuable human being whose essence is divine. Each bit of your life is precious. With this in mind, feel your life energy by keeping your awareness in the moment. One with your body, breath, and being, you will always have enough time.

People who have chosen are not shaken by the environment around them. They utilize all time and space, and they can change their environment and circumstances in a direction that helps them. It’s not hard to do. It works out if you keep at it. That’s when you will become a brain designer, a BOS designer who designs every circumstance and environment.

The first step to changing your circumstances is accepting what you have right now. Trust that where you are is the best environment. Don’t choose hardship and adversity by struggling against the difference between what is and what you want to be. Accept that your environment is the best environment, and start taking action for what you chose. As soon as you do, things will start to change.

If you start to use these laws to operate your BOS, you’ll soon see a difference in your life. Try it, and let me know how it goes.

The Answer Is Choice

The answer to solving the world’s problems, even your personal problems, is using your brain well.

That means not being stuck in your usual habits. It means being able to make a choice.

The moment you choose something, you change. The new substances that you need are immediately produced in your brain. That’s the secret of the brain.

In order to make a choice, you need to have a good “sense”—to be sharp, keen, mindful, aware, and attentive. The most important thing to sense is your soul, or your true self. That’s where your conscience is. Your conscience is the voice of your soul. It tells you in what way you should change.

Within your soul, within your conscience, is the Hongik spirit—the desire to be of benefit to everyone beyond your own personal needs. When you have a sense of your Hongik spirit, your brain becomes bright and positive. You become glad and high in spirits. Your divinity, which resides in your brain stem, becomes stronger and brighter. It thrives when your mind is focused on the Hongik spirit. That’s when your brain works at it’s best.

To solve the world’s problems and overcome of your personal challenges, become mindful of your soul, let yourself be filled with the Hongik spirit, and activate your divinity. That is how you choose to change.

Each person’s choice changes the world around them.

 

Ilchi Lee

 

The Secret of the Golden Flower

This poem is published in my book, Songs of Enlightenment. I’d like to share it with you now to remind you to find your golden flower, the bird of your soul.

Inside your heart

A golden flower blossoms;

Inside of me

And inside of you

Never dying . . .

This flower of your soul

Most precious gift

Bestowed by God;

Its golden scent

Offers a lifetime of love

To dwell in your heart forever

Blossoming

Unconditionally

Without judgment

Surrounding you

With absolute purity and love.

This flower is not for others

For you alone

It comes alive

Only in the hands of its own gardener;

Inside of everyone

This flower is waiting

Regardless of riches or fame

It waits for all;

As you leave this earth

Another awaits its beauty;

Approach and say

I have nurtured this flower,

Loaned to me

I now give it to you,

Golden flower

Hidden deep inside.

I found this flower so filled with love.

Don’t Worry About the Passing Waves

When you successfully meditate, or even if you simply step into a beautiful natural environment, your mind becomes clear and your heart becomes glad. You experience reverence toward Life. You realize the same pure divinity you find in nature is also inside of you.

But when you step out of nature or out of meditation, it’s difficult to maintain that state of being, in which you are in touch with your unconscious mind. You encounter all kinds of stress and emotions.

What’s important is not avoiding the waves of stress and emotion, but remembering that your current reality is not the only one. Think of your current state or situation as just a screen on which you are watching passing scenery. Don’t regard the phenomena as absolute.

Only reverence toward Life is absolute. The wonder of Life is an unchanging essence that flows eternally. You can re-experience this wonder by going down to the still depths below the waves.

But you cannot survive in the depths while you have a physical body. You have to go to the surface to breathe and check out the direction of the wind creating the waves to determine the course you want to travel.

With practice, you can master shifting between different states of consciousness, swimming down into the depths and popping up to surf the bouncing waves of the surface. Then you can successfully manage a meaningful life.

 

Ilchi Lee

 

CHANGE Film Wins Best Director Award in Costa Rica

The first film Ilchi Lee has produced so far, CHANGE: The LifeParticle Effect, co-directed by EJ Lim and Edwin Kim, has won Best Director at the 8th Annual Costa Rica International Film Festival (CRIFF).

CHANGE, a progressive, trailblazing documentary about life energy and human potential, was screened at this year’s festival, held July 23 – 27, 2014.

Film screenings were held at the theater at Sano Banano Village Hotel in Montezuma, Costa Rica, followed by Q&A sessions with all attending filmmakers.

The festival’s Director of Communications, Sandy Astudillo, said about CHANGE: “Thank you for sharing your work with us. It is wonderful to be able to screen such great documentaries with such an important message. It was indeed one of my favorites.”

“I have yet to go to Costa Rica,” says EJ Lim, “but what really amazes me about this award is how far reaching the message of CHANGE has been. I feel thrilled and honored.”

The film has also received awards in technical achievement from VISIONFEST 14, Tribeca, NY and numerous awards from the International Film Festival for Spirituality, Religion and Visionary 2013 in Jakarta, Indonesia.

CRIFF is dedicated to showcasing the brightest independent filmmakers from every corner of the world. This is truly an international event, where filmmakers from every country come together to meet, discuss their ideas and visions, and showcase their films in paradise.

Coming up on the International Day of Peace on September 21st, CHANGE: The LifeParticle Effect will be shown at the Awareness Film Festival at 4:00 pm in the Los Angeles, California area (exact location to be determined). Running from September 11th to the 21st, the Awareness Film Festival aims to bring “awareness and to open eyes to some of our world’s pressing issues: Ecological, Political, Health/Well Being and the Spirit.” In addition to films and filmmaker panels and Q&A sessions, the festival includes conscious art and music. It acts as a fundraiser for Heal One World, a non-profit that connects people in need with holistic and preventative healing modalities not covered by health insurance.

Ilchi Lee is in the process of producing a follow-up to CHANGE to explore the concepts in the film, especially those about the brain, further.

Information from ChangeYourEnergy.com

What Is Courtesy?

Courtesy is being thoughtful toward, attentive to, and considerate of others, regardless of who they are. It requires always being mindful of and paying attention to others and being able to sense how they are and what they need in a given moment or situation.

When you behave in a way that’s considerate of others, that’s when you start developing attentiveness. When you are thoughtful and considerate, you develop courtesy. If you are inconsiderate, selfish, self-righteous, and conduct yourself in a self-centered way, your etiquette disappears. In order to become someone who is attentive, instead of being self-serving, be considerate of others.

Those who are attentive have good relationships with others and are loved by people. Attentiveness is very important for succeeding in society. When you develop courtesy, you become a classy person, and when you’re classy, you come to have a sense of responsibility. When you have a sense of responsibility, you develop leadership.

So far in human history, many people have thought that they had to thoroughly defeat others, to grind others under their heels, in order to survive. If anything threatened them or their family or their nation, they would strike back to protect themselves. They also set up defense systems to make sure no one could hurt them. This is our structure of mine vs. yours. I rule this piece of land and you can have that one. And if I’m afraid I may not have enough, then I will take yours as well.

This is not courtesy.

Instead, I think people should adopt the attitude: “The most important thing to me now is to be thoughtful and considerate of others. I have the desire to give something back to others. I intend to live to help others for the sake of society’s happiness.” This attitude is the path to expressing enlightenment and developing an enlightened society.

If you have the desire to be genuinely considerate and thoughtful toward others, then you’ve recovered your humanity, and you’re an enlightened person. You have to get moving and inform the people around you about this. When you do, your life will become a life that has a beautiful fragrance. When you’ve really become thoughtful and considerate, when you have genuine courtesy, your soul and divinity come alive. Peace comes from courtesy.

How to Create Health, Happiness and Peace

Did you know that health, happiness and peace are all energy? In this talk in Los Angeles, CA, Ilchi Lee shares how recognizing different kinds of energy, and changing your perception can create health, happiness and peace.

Have Natural Transactions

In our interpersonal relationships, anyone can find him or herself in a difficult position sometimes or in a good position sometimes. As we go through life, we may provide help or we may receive help. Both are valuable and important.

But there’s pure-hearted help and there’s strategic, calculated help. Providing help is a beautiful and good thing. However, if you try to control even a person’s soul just because you helped them, that’s a crime. If you give and receive help to one another with mutual respect, on the other hand, that becomes a beautiful memory. Through that memory, people repay help with gratitude.

Having received help at one time isn’t shameful or embarrassing, and likewise, having given help is not something to show off or be arrogant about. Knowing this, you can engage in relationships as a civilized person who is mature and courteous.

In a person who is mature and courteous, the inner spirit can awaken, creating a genuine desire to help others. When that spirit awakens, the Hongik spirit, our joy grows when we are providing help. If you felt joy when you helped others, then that joy was enough. When you’re receiving help, then you have to receive it humbly, saying, “Ah, I’m truly grateful.” That’s what makes a good transaction between people.

This type of joyfully giving and receiving can be found in the principles of nature as well. A person’s inhalation and exhalation, the circulation of all the blood coming into and going out of the heart—they’re all natural transactions. Even the earth, with the rise and fall of the tides twice a day, takes two big breaths each day. And when a plant or an animal dies, their decay feeds new life. This is the natural cycle of giving and receiving.

When our transactions are fluid like those in nature, we will have reached a spiritual era. But humanity still isn’t making transactions properly. The current politics, religions, and societal systems must change in order for humanity to make proper natural transactions—in other words, transactions that can provide happiness and peace.

The greatest misfortune of this time is that courtesy and righteousness have disappeared from the relationships, on a smaller scale, between people, and beyond that, between nations and between groups.

Courtesy and righteousness are formed when human beings respect each other. The strength to keep growing relationships beautifully is precisely courtesy. Courtesy is the manifestation of enlightenment. All peace comes from courtesy. Natural transactions begin with courtesy.

An Enlightened Culture

When I recently spent a month in New Zealand, I discovered that the natives of New Zealand have a secret of enlightenment. They have a special greeting they use when they meet someone and want to become close to them—they rub noses with the other person and breathe together. They call this a hongi. This greeting is an expression that means, “I trust you,” and, “I love you.” Breathing together is sharing energy with each other. It says to each other, “You and I are one.”

Not just anyone touches noses and breathes together, however. They do that when they are in a family-like relationship in which they can trust each other. Leaders and dignitaries also greet each other with a hongi as a sign of trust.

HRH King Juan Carlos of Spain (L) shares a traditional Maori greeting of a hongi with Maori elder Gerrard Albert (R) during a visit to New Zealand on June 23, 2009 in Wellington, New Zealand. (Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images)

In Korea, we usually eat together if we want to become close to each other. The relationship of those who eat together is a good, mutually trusting one. Of course, there are situations in which this is done as a matter of strategy, but it’s an expression of goodwill regardless.

The way the natives of New Zealand get to know each other seems more honest and intimate. Although you could eat a meal with someone you don’t much like, it wouldn’t be easy to rub noses with them and breathe the same breath.

The greeting is also very economical. Eating food costs money, but it doesn’t take money to breathe.

I think it is a very good method for expressing emotion. In that sense, their culture is ahead. You advance one step further, though, if you know that we are all connected with each other through breath. Then you know that we breathe together even though we don’t touch noses. That is enlightenment.

Still in an Uncivilized Culture

National boundaries were created by people. The atmosphere, though, turns around the whole planet. Even though we live breathing with our noses stuck up in the same sky, we’ve had much pain and sadness in a history of failing to trust and love each other and of seeking to possess and control each other. That is an uncivilized culture far behind that of the New Zealand natives. No matter how much science has developed, and even though we have airplanes and cell phones, such a culture is uncivilized.

All humans are pursuing happiness and peace, but humanity has not yet created such a culture. I think this means that we are failing to use our minds well, and that we’re failing to make good use of our brains. It makes us somehow inadequate and not whole. That’s why we have not created universal happiness and peace.

I do the work I do with the intent of trying to perfect the things that are inadequate and imperfect. But I truly cannot do this work alone. It’s not enough to have some power, not enough to have some military force, not enough to have money, and not enough to have the power of science. Having a big country isn’t enough, and having a large population isn’t enough either.

What’s important is that it requires an enlightened mind. That’s why we all have to use our minds well. And the whole must change. Human consciousness must change.

What It Takes to Change

Many people do nothing more than worry, and the planet continues to sicken. They are focusing on acquiring more power, on acquiring more money, and on satisfying their own desires. Well-educated people are this way, too, and all institutions are failing to break out of this mold. It’s because of the boundaries created by the inward perspective of religions, nations, and other institutions. Imagine if, instead, we could all figuratively rub noses and breathe together.

First, it takes hope. Those who have a lot of hope can, sooner or later, bring those flowers of hope into full bloom and create a world of happiness and peace. Such a world will never come, though, to those who think it impossible. Why? Because such a world is not created by fists, and it is not created by money. Such a world is created only by the mind. By mind, I don’t mean the accumulation of knowledge; I’m referring to an enlightened consciousness.

TV and other mass media play an important role. If you take a look at the different kinds of information coming out of the TV these days, you’ll see that so much of it is strange and unrelated to enlightenment. My heart really aches to witness it.

It’s not that we don’t have things. We have a growing body of knowledge and amazing communication technology. But we aren’t using them well. We have minds, but fail to use them. We have good things, but fail to use those things for the cause of human peace and happiness.

The most important thing we need to use well is mind. Mind is where everything is first created and where it all starts. Do you have a mind of happiness and peace? Do you have hope in your mind?

To enter a state of mind that creates happiness and peace, you must know energy, and you must know the soul. And then you need to express it in your life. Then your mind becomes brighter and clearer. It becomes a mind of light. A few people becoming brighter and clearer though, won’t make this happen; everyone must become brighter.