Ilchi Lee's Blog, page 80

Ilchi Lee at the Jakarta 2013 International Film Festival

On November 28, 2013, Ilchi Lee attended the International Film Festival for Spirituality, Religion, and Visionary in Jakarta, Indonesia where his film CHANGE: The LifeParticle Effect won 14 awards including an award for Best Short Documentary and a Gold Award for Filmmaker of Spirituality 2013 and Best Story & Concept. See the highlights of the event and hear what Ilchi Lee had to say about it.

Unleashing Brain Potential in Miami

By Ryan Sims

On Friday January 17th, educators from around south Florida met at the Miami campus of Union Institute and University for a conference on Brain Education. In attendance was Ilchi Lee, founder of the International Brain Education Association (IBREA). He was there to give a keynote speech about the future of education and was introduced by Power Brain Education Program Director, Dave Beal. Mr. Beal began by leading the group through a series of warm-ups, which briefly demonstrated a few exercises from the Brain Education program. Ilchi Lee then took the floor and began his presentation on Brain Education, IBREA, and the future of education in a changing world.

Mr. Lee highlighted the success of the Brain Education pilot program that was implemented in El Salvador. In 2012, the program was expanded to more schools within El Salvador and is now being prepared for implementation in 180 schools around the country. Similar programs are also in place in Liberia as well as the Philippines. Ilchi Lee continued the presentation by outlining some of the substance and ideas behind the Brain Education program. “The current education system kills confidence. Brain Education is a shift in education, to respect the brain,” explained Lee. The purpose of Brain Education is to help people “achieve health, happiness, and peace by realizing the highest value that the brain possesses.” The presentation concluded with a discussion and question and answer session that covered topics including the effects of technology and smartphones on the developing brain, the over-diagnosis of attention deficit disorder, and Brain Education’s positive effects on people with Alzheimer’s.

Viewing CHANGE

The following day, the University of Miami hosted a screening of Ilchi Lee’s internationally acclaimed documentary CHANGE: The LifeParticle Effect. Almost 200 people viewed the documentary and were treated to a lecture by the film’s creator, Ilchi Lee. Lee explained that after seeing the film, “you are now prepared for change. The key is simple. It is that you have an infinite power within you. It’s simply a matter of using it. Many people are unaware of this power. They don’t know how to use it. To use it you have to know your value.” Lee explained that there are ways to help realize your value and that these lie within the powers of your brain. Lee spoke for almost an hour and led the audience through exercises, as well as magnetic meditation.

After the screening and lecture, there was a line out the door of audience members hoping to have their books and DVDs signed by Mr. Lee. Audience member Monica Gutierrez, a Miami resident, shared her takeaway from the film: “The movie hit the nail on the head. So many people are stuck in life and don’t realize that they have the power to do positive things for themselves. I think that if more people were reminded [of] this, the world would be a much different place.”

Spontaneity, Creativity, & Joy: Connecting to the Divine

I spent the last week in Florida because I had several speaking engagements there. One evening, as I walked around town, I heard some vibrant Spanish guitar music. I was immediately captivated, so I sat down for a while to enjoy the guitarist’s performance.

He was an incredibly dynamic performer, and throughout his vigorous and impassioned performance, he swung his guitar all around himself. It was something I’d never seen before. In addition to his emphatic strumming and flair, this man would hold his guitar aloft as he played, as well as behind his head and even with just one hand. Sometimes he beat it like a dream. Rather than simply plucking the strings, he made every possible sound with the instrument. In fact, he used his whole body to play his guitar.

Ilchi Lee with Nicholas Marks, self-taught Spanish guitarist

I’m already fond of Spanish guitar music, but anyone could see that this guitarist—Nicholas Marks—was playing his heart out and having the time of his life. He played with total freedom, and everyone in the audience couldn’t resist bouncing to the beat. I laughed and danced, and we smiled to each other in acknowledgment of our connection when our gaze met across the courtyard where he was playing. This was clearly how he expressed his soul.

I purchased a couple of his CDs, and after he completed his performance, I asked him to sign one for me. We shook hands, and then I asked if he’d like to join me for a drink.

Nicholas came to sit with me at an outdoor table, and we had a delightful conversation. He was born in Pennsylvania and was of gypsy heritage. He never went to school, but was educated by his parents at home, and he seemed very satisfied with that.

I asked if he could read music, and he said he never learned. He told me that he’s been playing the guitar for 25 years. He received a guitar from his father as a gift when he was ten years old, and his father had taught him the basics. Other than that, he’s self-taught. I asked how he learned all those songs, and he said, “A lot of practice.”

I told him I could sense that he expressed the divine within himself through his guitar playing. I also told him that his music is very inspired and healing, and that he could heal a lot of people with it. It’s not just his guitar, but his whole body that is his instrument, and it can be an instrument of healing for people and the world.

I hope I have the opportunity to help this man share his gift with many people, the way he expresses his connection with the divine through his joyful spontaneity and creativity. I invited him to Sedona, and I hope he can come to Korea as well. He asked me to join him for lunch tomorrow.

Then I went home and had a fabulous time dancing to every song on his CDs.

The Miami Pioneers

Miami Body & Brain Center staff during a visit to Sedona, AZ

I’ve just spent the last few days in Miami, Florida, a world-renowned tourist location, speaking at different events hosted by the Body & Brain Center that opened in there about two years ago.

We had a conference for educators on Brain Education at the Union Institute & University, the final screening of the Change film tour that about 160 people attended at the University of Miami, and a special chakra healing workshop for members of the Body & Brain Center.

I was impressed and touched that a small group of people at one center could achieve so much. A Body & Brain Center is a franchise center of Dahn Yoga & Health, so it was opened by a Dahn Yoga member who wanted to teach and help people. This center is on its own, far from other centers. I really admire their pioneering spirit.

While I was there, I gave them a new dream to achieve. I challenged them to expand and create more franchise centers so that more and more people can learn to use their Brain Operating System (BOS) to become artists of their lives.

Meet the Bird of Your Soul

Since I had my first big enlightenment, I’ve been communicating the truth of what I discovered is people’s true nature. I’ve been speaking about and developing exercises to enable people to discover that nature for themselves, their unchanging and everlasting soul.

For 20 years, I’ve had a story the discovery of your soul in my mind, and I’ve been looking for the right way to tell it. I thought it would be best shown with pictures for people to really understand. Pictures stimulate the imagination and make the abstract concrete. But I could never find the right artist to draw the right pictures until last year.

Jisoo Han

Finally, I found a woman from South Korea named Jisu Han to create winsome illustrations of what I call the bird of the soul. She is a Dahn Yoga practitioner and dreams a world where all life forms dance together in oneness. Because she has experienced her true nature through her training, the illustrations she hand-painted for my book express that nature eloquently. The message of the soul I want to share is imbued in the clear and sensitive expression of the drawings. I’m very grateful to have found her.

Now in this book, I tell the story of a man named Jay and his relationship with his soul, symbolized by a sweetly, singing bird. Traveling life’s journey with Jay, you rediscover what is most precious and important, and the wisdom, meaning, and potential that come from your soul.

By representing your soul as a bird, you can more easily visualize and meet with your soul in meditation. With the joy of discovering a long-lost friend, you can lay down the burdens that disconnect you from your soul in your daily life and return to the freedom of the innocence of childhood.

With Bird of the Soul, I hope you hear the voice of your soul always singing its love and support to you. In a way, Jay’s story is my story, and I believe it is many people’s story. That’s why I included a 21-day meditation journal and a guided meditation CD to help you bring the story of Jay and his soul bird into your own life. My heart sings and I am so excited to share this book with you.

Have a Dream

[image error]This week we’re celebrating

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday.

He is famous for his grand dream that everyone is recognized as valuable and precious people

who are free to fulfill their dreams.

Right now, you are valuable and precious,

simply because you are alive at this moment.

That’s something you must recognize

for yourself.

It’s something you can be really proud of.

The year 2014 is a new beginning.

It’s a time of great change.

What is your dream?

Your dream is also precious and valuable.

You are a person of light,

a golden firebird that will make 2014 beautiful.

Can you be so wildly successful this year

that you achieve everything you want

so you have no regrets?

Now the change has begun.

You are the hub of that change.

To be the change the world needs,

to change your life,

recognize and choose your true value,

right here, right now.

 

Ilchi Lee

 

What Will Be Your Legacy?

While I was in Miami, Florida recently for a Brain Education Conference and a screening of my film CHANGE: The LifeParticle Effect, I took some time to visit the Vizcaya Museum.

The museum is the former villa and estate of James Deering (1859–1925), a bachelor millionaire who made his fortune from his family’s agricultural machinery enterprise. When Deering died, he left the estate to his half-brother Charles, whose sons eventually inherited it. Because they couldn’t manage the estate well, Deering’s nephews sold it to the state of Florida, who turned the villa and its elaborate gardens into a museum for the public.

The villa is a grand piece of art with about 70 rooms. I noticed, however, that the master bedroom was not bigger or more spectacular than any other bedroom. When I saw John Deering’s picture in the house, I felt that he has the energy of earning money. When people visit this mansion, I think most would think about James Deering’s money—how rich he was, how they could also become rich, how he got to be rich, etc. But I wonder how many of the visitors think, “I will become rich like this guy in order to use the money to benefit the human race and spread the Hongik philosophy.”

More than how much money you have, what’s important is what you do with it. It’s the purpose of your life and how well you fulfill it that really matters.

When John Deering died, he left this beautiful estate and a company that made equipment that increased the productivity of farmers, and perhaps more. When your life comes to its inevitable end, what will you leave behind for humanity?

As I walked through the beautiful gardens, my thoughts turned to Mago, Mother Earth. Not many people know about Mago and the Earth creation story of Mago Castle that comes from the Korean Sundo tradition. At Mago Castle, all life lived in harmony and oneness with each other. There was a spiritual civilization that was quite different from the material civilization in which we are currently living.

I would like my legacy to be a change in human consciousness that rejuvenates the ideals of the spiritual civilization of Mago Castle.

Kids Discover Their Brain’s Hidden Abilities

By the Editor

From Thursday, January 9, 2014 to Sunday, January 12, 2014, forty-one kids aged five to nineteen years, plus several adults, gathered at the Honor’s Haven Resort and Spa in Ellenville, New York for the HSP Student Leadership Training run by Power Brain Education.

HSP stands for Heightened Sensory Perception, which is the ability to sense energy and gather information from it. HSP training is an advanced method of Brain Education (BE) designed by Ilchi Lee to allow people to use the vast, undeveloped potential of their brain by expanding their consciousness and integrating the different parts of the brain.

Through exercises such as learning to perceive colors, shapes, liquids, or letters without ordinary visual input, students increase their brain’s ability to process sensory information. They develop the understanding that the human brain has capabilities that we are not fully aware of and therefore are not using consciously.

By developing their brain’s dormant capacities, students typically develop the personal qualities of self-esteem, positive attitude, and a deeper sense of connectedness and compassion, giving us hope for a better life and a better world.

During the training, participants practiced perceiving the color of a card while blindfolded, and most were very successful at it. To connect their mind and body and integrate their brain, they also engaged in tai chi, energy breathing postures, and team-building activities. The participants further stimulated their brain by learning an empowering dance and taking a nature hike.

See the kids learning the dance in this video from the Training:

The highlight of the training was a special session with Ilchi Lee. After opening each participant’s third eye (or Indang in Korean) energy point, he taught them Soul Stepping to get their energy flowing, increase their focus, and let them have fun. Once their energy was flowing, Ilchi Lee guided the students through a meditation on the bird of their soul to help them connect with their pure selves.

The young participants who listened to Ilchi Lee’s talk said they felt empowered, happy, and inspired by it. They felt that the words and energy he gave them would stay with them forever, and they can use it to create what they want in their lives. One eleven-year-old said, “His energy made me so happy and made me want to feel happier more of the time and help other people around me feel happy.” According to Ilchi Lee, one of the ultimate goals of Brain Education is to help people use their brain to become genuinely happy, healthy, and peaceful.

One of the Training staff and a manager of Power Brain Education, Dave Beal, remarked: “I am sure most of these HSPers will keep growing through BE classes and programs. The parents were very satisfied with their children’s experience at HSP Leadership and were very impressed with our program. How could they not be? It is so miraculous watching the kids trust themselves and opening their Indang to see the color cards; it gives me so much hope for our humanity.”

Fall in Love with Yourself

Over the course of our lives, we all have been wounded in our hearts, wounds that developed into scars. Those wounds and scars act like negative emotion generators, reacting to the situations we encounter in life with more wounds and hurt. Left alone, our scars drain the confidence we have in ourselves, from our body to our mind to our spirit. They keep us away from our bright spirit.

When we are not connected to our spirit, when our spirit does not shine from us like a radiant star, we often turn to other people for our happiness. We like someone, and when they like us back, when they recognize our worth, we are happy and feel valuable.

However, this happiness and sense of self-worth we get from other people are not our true value. This happiness is conditional and can be taken away because it’s not something we make for ourselves. True value and true happiness comes from our spirit and its unconditional expression. It comes from within us, and so cannot be taken away. It is our choice, but many people do not know how to realize their value and their happiness.

You can create your own happiness through rhythm. Rhythm is energy. It is the expression of the pure energy of life that animates us all. By feeling rhythm and moving with rhythm, we move our energy and release the stagnant energy inside us, even in the form of our thoughts and emotions. Stifled within our stagnant energy is our spirit. By moving with rhythm, we can set our spirit free.

Soul Stepping

Recently I began showing people a new way of moving with rhythm. In the past, I’ve taught Brain Wave Vibration and Dahnmu (energy dancing). This method is another form of those techniques, but instead of shaking your body or moving with the flow of energy, you step with the rhythm—like tap dancing. Step lightly so that the soles of your feet touch the ground with each beat of your favorite music. Keep your back and neck straight and your shoulders back so that energy can flow well in your body. Except for this posture, however, don’t worry about your movements. Just relax as you step forward and back, and side to side, however you want. The important thing is to touch the ground with your soles to each beat of the rhythm. This makes your brain happy—it stimulates it and gives it a thrill. With this Soul Stepping method, you’ll feel the rhythm reverberate through your whole body.

You can step to the rhythm for as little as five minutes, or even for an hour or more. If you do it long enough, depending on how clear and strong your energy is when you begin, you can feel your small self fading away, and you can become aware of the vast nothingness that underlies everything. In that state of being, you can shed tears, and you experience this huge explosion in your body and you’re there inside of light. That light is what I’ve called the LifeParticle Sun—your spirit. It’s the brilliantly shining self that exists in and of itself. It’s also called the soul.

One of my favorite songs nowadays, especially for Soul Stepping, is “Last Carnival” by Norihiro Tsuru from his album For Your Memories. In this video, he performs the music piece. Why don’t you follow along and try Soul Stepping for yourself.

How did you feel when you stepped to the rhythm? Did you feel happy? Did you have fun?

Through rhythm, you can create the ultimate emotion for yourself. What boyfriend or girlfriend can make you that happy? You don’t need to rely on other people; rhythm makes you independent. It liberates you, and it’s totally free.

Through rhythm, you can find trust and respect for yourself. When you do Soul Stepping, you don’t need to impress anyone except yourself. Then you discover the magnificence within. You see how awesome your body is, how beautiful. When you feel the rhythm, when you get lost in the rhythm, then you can fall in love with yourself.

I Invite You to Join an Experiment

I invite you to participate in an experiment.

I invite you to create changes for all by creating change in your own life.

Then share how you did it, and the simple exercises you used, with others. Send many people LifeParticles when they need help and healing.

As we keep making positive changes in our lives, our experiment will grow, hopefully to the point of creating a better civilization, one that is based on more than the material expansion that characterizes our current civilization. Although I don’t know exactly what it will look like, I think of it as a spiritual civilization that upholds each person’s true value and the best of the human spirit.

Many people have already started this change by changing their energy.

To change your energy, I would recommend:

1. Taking 3 Deep Breaths

Take 3 deep breaths at least 3 times a day to refresh your mind and energy. If you are stressed, take 3 deep breaths before you do or say anything. Use the space you create inside through breathing to make a better choice that can benefit all.

2. Performing Acts of Kindness

Do something for the world out of pure kindness at least 3 times a day. Say a warm and caring hello to a neighbor. Remove a rock from a walking or bicycling path. Do anything that will benefit the world even in the smallest way . . . or even in big ways.

3. Sending LifeParticles to Other People

Send LifeParticles, or what some people think of as positive energy, to at least 3 people or groups who need it— without expectation of recognition or reward. This will benefit not only others, but yourself as well, because the positive energy you send will flow through you and affect you first.

As you can see, this experiment is pretty simple: Be genuinely positive by having positive energy. Have kind energy before you say kind words or do kind gestures. Affect other people positively.

Then together, we can create a positive world.