Sep 11th, 2007
Ilchi Lee, Human Technology A Toolkit for Authentic Living
Ilchi Lee
Journey to the Soul: Reflection
Lee describes the soul’s journey in three successive stages: reflection, awakening, and choice. His words on the soul are simple, straightforward, and genuine, as they emerge from the journey of his own soul.
“Who am I?” “What is the purpose of my life?” These questions arise spontaneously
throughout our lives, either unbidden or through conscious intent. Anyone who wishes to live an authentic life must answer these questions regardless of whether they believe in the existence of the soul or practice a religion. If these queries remain unanswered, life will more than likely remain superficial and empty, in spite of any material abundance. If you wish to make the soul’s journey, then I suggest you ask yourself these questions relentlessly and ruthlessly, and listen carefully.
There are many types of sounds within us, such as those of our body, thoughts, and emotions. If we are attentive, we may notice that something or someone is constantly speaking. When we remain silent and listen intently as others speak to us, we are not hearing an outside voice only. Something is continually speaking within us. That being reacts to all the information that we see and hear. In fact, that being is reacting even as you read this.
Our experience and knowledge are constantly being edited as we think. ‘I feel cold.’ ‘I feel hot.’ ‘I am hungry.’ ‘That person is attractive.’ Sometimes, when our mind is at peace, we can hear a different, distinctive voice.
As usual another day is passing. The weather is beautiful. I am taking a break from work to look outside my window. My body feels at ease, and my mind is clear and tranquil. From the depths of my heart, I feel a certain sense of yearning, a sense of loss as if I have lost something very important. I cannot explain the feeling. Ilchi Lee
Then I suddenly hear, “Can this be it?” “What am I doing right now?” I look around me, as I am surprised to hear these kinds of questions. I feel self-conscious and awkward, so I hastily return to my work. Throughout the day, I keep recalling that unfamiliar voice. However, I do not tell anyone about it. I keep it concealed in my heart. That voice becomes masked by the noises of the world, and I forget about it for a long time.
If you have had this kind of experience before, try to recall it and how you felt in that moment. Whose voice do you think it was? I believe it was the voice of your soul.
I am confident that you have heard similar voices and pondered such questions at some point in your life. But the so-called “adult responsibilities” of day-to-day living distract our focus from these larger questions of life. Our priorities become heavily, even completely, tilted towards our immediate sensory needs. We become preoccupied with how to survive, rather than why. We may even forget that we ever asked such questions.
That is a tragic point in human experience, because that is the point at which life can become meaningless. We try to supply meaning by asserting that our lives are about our families, our loved ones, our jobs or our religion. But at the deepest place of our being, as important as these things certainly are, we sense that there must be something more. There must be some reason for it all, some purpose behind it all. There has to be something more than just day-to-day survival.
And so the questions are buried deep within our heart, remaining hidden and often forgotten during our lifetime, until it is time to depart this world. Suddenly the questions become important again. At that moment we may realize that we have lived without ever knowing ourselves, or why we have even lived at all. When it is time to go, we may feel bewildered. What was this all about? What was the point of it all?
We often compare life to a journey, but more often than not, it is closer to a wandering. This is because for many, the destination is not clear. A wanderer does not know where to go, while a person on a journey has a specific destination in mind. Ilchi Lee
When we have a clear idea of who we are and why we live, our lives become a journey. A story is created about our life. And when the end comes, even if the story adds up to only one line, the story reaches a settled conclusion.
Like many others, I also heard that voice one day. I was not necessarily attentive to that voice from the beginning. However, I began to like it as time passed. I grew closer to that voice, and we started to share many things. I shared my sadness, joy, sense of defeat and victory, my pleasure and pain. Ultimately, we shared peace and a smile.
I discovered something long after I became friends with that voice. I realized it never ceased to speak regardless of whether I paid attention to it. That voice had been talking to me not only while I was awake but also while I was asleep. I simply had not heard the voice due to other noises drowning it out. Sounds of the body, thoughts, and emotions are usually louder and rowdier than the voice of the soul. They tend to speak more, causing the voice of the soul to get lost easily.
We can only begin to hear the soul’s voice after the sounds of our body, thoughts, and emotions become softer. Before the soul begins its journey, these sounds, thoughts, and emotions fundamentally concern the body. Our bodies may have specific desires in different situations, but we generally long for security, recognition, and control. We try to feel secure by possessing material things. We tend to be satisfied when others give us recognition. We have a sense of superiority and confidence when we feel in control of situations or people around us.
If these three desires are not satisfied, our body, thoughts, and emotions continue to make noise: “Do not even think about taking that away from me!” “How dare you disregard me?” “Listen to me and do as I say!”
The voice of the soul, on the other hand, has no interest in such egotism. For example, if we try very hard to become famous and succeed, we may hear that voice saying, “Now, are you satisfied? Is this truly what you want?”
In order to hear the voice of our soul, we must be able to quiet the sounds of our body, thoughts, and emotions.
HT breathing techniques, meditation, and meridian exercises benefit not only our health or energy levels, but can also bring us to states of deep calm, where we can more easily hear the soul.
“Who am I? Why am I here?” How will the soul answer these questions? In the beginning you may hear, “I am this person, who does this job.” Of course these are perfectly reasonable answers, and they may be exactly what you need to hear at a given time.
But I challenge you to keep asking these questions, until you no longer receive literal or conceptual answers. If we approach these questions with deep effort and sincerity, they can penetrate through the masks of job, personality, ethnicity, gender, or any other ego reference. Eventually we awaken to the realization that these two questions are one and the same, and the answer to one solves the other. That answer goes beyond words, and it is likely to reorder your life priorities on the grandest of scales.
The Brain and Enlightenment
Ilchi Lee says that optimizing our brain function is the thread that weaves together all the tools of Human Technology. Furthermore, he reveals that enlightenment ultimately lies in the brain.
Although I studied anatomy and biology as a clinical pathology major in college, it was through my personal experiences that I came to understand my brain. The greatest lesson came during my desperate search for the meaning of my life, when I engaged in a twenty-one day sleep-deprived fast on a remote mountain in South Korea .
As you might have experienced, going without sleep is much more difficult than going without food. After three days without sleep I started muttering to myself; after five days, I was not able to control my body or mind. In fact I really went out of my mind. It was in that nearly delirious state, however, that I learned to peer into that “place beyond thought.” I had to go to the very edge of conscious awareness. Only then can one access what has been called universal consciousness. Even a tiny bit of “self” consciousness can block a person from experiencing this realm fully.
Yet despite my ordeal, let me emphasize that this awareness does not require any kind of physical trauma or test. It is simply a matter of surrender—which can be achieved any number of ways. It is at the moment of absolute surrender of everyday consciousness that one encounters a world of non-consciousness that is, paradoxically, a dimension of new awareness.
It is a paradox. It involves entering a world of non-consciousness while being more fully conscious than ever before. Enlightenment is becoming one with that consciousness. It is the ultimate human experience. In such a state you will realize who you truly are. Furthermore, I am wholly convinced that this state of enlightenment is a function of the brain. It is stunningly physical and spiritual at the same time.
Enlightenment is the experience of the integration of the body, mind, and soul. It is the experience of congruence. It is the melding of All That Is, manifested in your personal experience as one integrated expression of the Essential Self.
Not too many people will last twenty-one days without sleeping. And as I have said, it is not even necessary. Even if you did endure such an ordeal, there is no guarantee that it would bring you the answers you seek.
Instead, push your own consciousness to its very limit with fundamental inquiries about your own existence—living inquiries that are asked through your courageous movement through your own life. You have to be willing to risk your whole way of life to make such inquiries, and to live the answers that they bring you.
Because I knew that enlightenment lay in the brain, I made the brain the new focus of all my strategies and plans. I wanted to share what I understood about enlightenment. My plan was, first, to make people familiar and comfortable with their own brains and, second, to encourage them to begin living their lives as if they were already enlightened. This is the Big Secret of Enlightenment. When you live your everyday life as if you are already enlightened, you can raise yourself to a very high level of awareness.
Enlightened action can lead you to a state of enlightenment. It is not necessary to wait for enlightened awareness to fall upon you in order to take enlightened action. It can work the other way around. The important thing is to develop a higher awareness of what constitutes enlightened action. You do not have to learn to build a car from scratch before driving one. To be really honest with you, I went about things the hard way.
In any case, at least now I can benefit from my experience by showing people an easier way to become enlightened. I tried to describe that in this book.
The more I consider the brain, the more excited I become. In particular, I am more than ever interested in the brain for its potential for peace. I have no doubt that when we create harmony with each other, when we help one another, our brains produce hormones of health and good feeling. Although negative habits and memories may block this function, the potential remains. We can recover that state of peace.
This book is a summary of all I have learned, and of the messages that have emerged from it. I offer them humbly to you as a gift. I hope that you find them valuable, as you continue your own personal journey.
In truth, I share these understandings not so much to help you as for you to assist me in moving further into my own self-realization. For it is my vision to do whatever I can to help make ours a better world, to assist in healing humanity. And this requires that you achieve your own self-mastery.
Your Family Life–Past and Present
Is there any such thing as a family with no problems? I doubt it. Some of us have experienced trauma from abuse or living in a home twisted by an addiction. Others have had parents so dominated by a career that they may hardly know what it means to have a caring parent. Parental overindulgence brings its own problems if the child does not learn how to be successful in the “real world.”
When we consider the perspectives of suffering, transience, and Mu-ah (no-self), the impossibility of a “family with no problems” becomes even more obvious. If the individual struggles when confronting these shattering spiritual truths, how much more difficult for an entire family to confront them!
Nowadays, most of us have had a chance to reflect on dysfunctional patterns from our family upbringing. If you are very psychologically oriented, you may know when some aspect of your behavior or life relationships represents an unnecessary extension of an old family habit.
As we gain greater perspective and clarity, how should we proceed with respect to the families who raised us? Depending on your circumstances, it may or may not be important for you to directly re-address some issues with your original nuclear family, to heal and remake some old limiting patterns. Only you can decide whether and when to return home to make things right. Ask yourself whether it will serve your highest life purpose to do so.
In any case, there is no question that you have the responsibility to make your own current family in your highest image of love and wisdom. You must consciously end any patterns of abuse, cruelty, neglect, passivity, dominance, or other dysfunction that has been passed to you, and vow not to recreate it in your life today. Everyone’s potential is limited by some kind of needless habit leftover from their family upbringing, and we are all stunted until those patterns are broken and remade.
The difficulty is the gap between knowledge and action. We may be aware that past anger towards a family member is the source of our needless anger towards the world, and we may still continue to act out that pattern, however pointless. After we have gained that understanding, the real challenge is, how do we change ourselves?
The HT toolkit is designed to help you bridge the gap between knowledge and action. All of the skills we have covered in the areas of health, sexuality, and life purpose, as well as the tools of Brain Respiration, are intended to help you change your life in the direction that you know you need to go.
If you are thinking of creating a family, please consider that health, sex, and the soul are core aspects of successful family management. Being self-reliant and learning basic principles and skills to manage these issues is a requirement for family leadership.
Parents should be able to take care of most health concerns for themselves and their children, provide guidance on sexuality, and give them teachings that will awaken their passion and life purpose. Such competence should likewise be demonstrable by anyone who intends to lead other “families”—congregations, associations, organizations or groups of any kind whose members rely on their leader for emotional, physical, and spiritual support. Happiness that starts in the family is the path to a healthier society and the foundation of peace for humanity.
Twelve HT Maxims for Authentic Living
1. Turn your approach to life “inside out” and be self-reliant.
2. Return to your breath and body as tools for your health.
3. Breathe slowly, deeply and lightly, especially when you are upset.
4. Keep a fire in the belly and a cool head.
5. Celebrate your sexuality with purpose and responsibility.
6. Listen for the voice of your soul until you hear your life’s purpose.
7. Embrace the suffering and emptiness of life as the foundation
of enlightenment.
8. Live as your soul directs with honesty, integrity, and diligence.
9. Train your body to embrace change over old habits.
10. Smile and be at peace for no reason.
11. When you need an answer, ask your brain.
12. Remember to exhale at the moment of death.
For more information about Dr. Ilchi lee, visit his official website.