I was alone in a remote mountain, having gone without water, food, or sleep for twenty-one days.
I was at my utmost limit, in body and mind. I had an excruciatingly painful headache that pierced through my head in rhythmic and dreadful pounding. My body wouldn't move, nor my tongue form a word. And it was at this moment that the cosmos opened up inside me and swept me into her arms with a loud resounding moment of enlightenment, a deafening crash that seemed to transport me to another world. ‘Cosmic Mind is My Mind and Cosmic Energy is My Energy!' my mouth automatically croaked in eternal joy, voicing the Oneness that I had glimpsed before and had even known intellectually, but had never felt at this level of profound depth.
This voice told me that my body is not me, but mine. It told me that my mind is not me, but mine. It assured me that the Cosmic Mind is my mind and that the Cosmic energy is my energy. Through this moment, I came to feel the all-encompassing rhythm of life. I experienced the light, the sound, and the vibration that formed the source of all life, absorbing and understanding in wonder the Cosmic Order within that governed all things. Through that moment, I had found my True Self, after so many years of fruitless search.
My introduction to the world
I was born in Korea in the midst of chaos and change.
It was 1950. On June 25 of that year, the Soviet-trained and equipped armies of North Korea invaded the woefully unprepared South Korea all along the Thirty-eighth Parallel, an imaginary line along an expanse of lush greenery marked by an unending stretch of razor-sharp wire fence that divided North from South Korea, forcibly separating families, friends, and lovers. The North Koreans sought to unify the whole Korean Peninsula and free us from the evil American imperialists, and the South Koreans resisted the insidious encroachment of the Stalinist communist dictatorship with equal fervour. Both claimed to be the true inheritors of the new Korea, after the long and torturous Japanese occupation. For the next three years, the forces of socialism and capitalism came together with a cataclysmic effect on the Korean continent with all the power and fanaticism of young ideologies, eventually involving more than sixteen countries and marking the beginning of the Cold War. At the end, the war would claim more than four million lives on both sides, including those of more than fifty thousand American GIs.
To the Koreans, the war was a brutal, yet eye-opening, introduction to the world at large. We saw that there existed in the world all different types of people: whites, blacks, Indians, large, small, and dark. We were introduced to different ideas and ways of living, acting, laughing, and crying. We saw that people spoke different tongues, mind-boggling in all their variety and complexities. It was a world of stark contrasts, immediate fear of death and constant struggle for life, grief-stricken chant over a lost son and bright laughter at the sight of a returning daughter, the sight of corpses littering the streets and cries of newborns amidst the rubble.
An enlightenment revolution
It was in this world that I grew up, asking questions about life and death as early as I can remember, questions that were eventually answered in that one spectacular moment of enlightenment after countless years of all-consuming search. And I write now because I want to call upon the world to embark on an Enlightenment Revolution, a massive spiritual awakening that will sweep across the Earth with a thundering speed, bringing the joy of enlightenment to everyone. I write now to let everyone know of their own right to enlightenment, that enlightenment is not only the realm of the saintly, and that the massive enlightenment of humanity is the only lasting solution to our real problems.
Feats of energy
My own journey started when I was five years old and felt, for the first time, the mysterious and warm power of Ki energy, the force that animates all life and fills the cosmos itself. More popularized by the Chinese pronunciation of Chi in the West, Ki is the invisible energy that goes around and through all things, acting as the invisible yarn from which everything in the universe is woven. Through my personal explorations of Ki energy, I was able to reach a high level of energy control, allowing me to perform some so-called miraculous feats, such as communing with spirits, curing incurable diseases, helping paralyzed people walk, and calming mentally unstable people. This control is not as fantastic as it may seem at first glance, for all it involves is training and technique. It is akin to training to be an athlete. The road may be difficult and long, but definitely do-able with enough determination and talent. You don't need to be specially chosen by God; you just need to choose to do it yourself. There is nothing spiritual or holy about performing these feats of energy, although it can act as a method through which you can reach into your divine spirituality and attain enlightenment.
However, no matter how high my level of energy control reached, I realized the limits of creating such energy phenomena, for it remained just another technique or skill, no different from playing tennis or singing a song well. Just because you can communicate with invisible spirits doesn't mean that you know the answer to life's ultimate purpose. Just because you can draw in and send forth energy doesn't mean that you can satisfy the questions that lie buried deep down in your soul. You need to be spiritually awakened to have those answers. It was this realization that led me to more searching, finally culminating in that deafening moment of liberation that I described in the beginning.
The purpose of life
The purpose of life is really no big deal, although people have generally viewed the question, Why am I here? as the ultimate in self-exploration. As with any question, when you look at it from a different point of view, it is very simple. When you accept that human beings are spiritual beings and that our physical and mental selves, including our personalities, are just tools that we are given to affect our spiritual nature, then the answer just presents itself. The true purpose of life lies in the spiritual maturing process of individuals, society, and humanity as a whole. We are here on Earth in such and such shape, form, and mind to strive for the completion of our spiritual selves, not only as individuals but as the whole of humanity. We are here to heal our souls and come closer to recovering the divine nature – our spiritual nature – through the physical and mental tools that we have been given. ‘My body is mine, not me.’ ‘My mind is mine, not me.’ These two sentences form the centrepiece of this spiritual point of view. If the physical body and mental acuity that you have been born with are not you, but just tools temporarily lent you for you to experience things that will mature you spiritually, then who is the real you? Simple. Your spiritual nature. And since your spiritual nature is essentially a part of the Cosmic Spirit, and so is the spiritual nature of everyone else's, then your spiritual nature and someone else's spiritual nature are parts of the same Grand Spirit. This is why every spiritual and religious leader in the history of humankind has told us that we are One. Another way to describe the spiritually maturing process, this spiritual awakening that is our true purpose of life, is enlightenment. The true purpose of life for every human being is, therefore, to reach enlightenment.
Finding balance first
I found the way to express my true purpose in this lifetime. It is to educate people so that they too may experience the spiritual awakening, the enlightenment, that I have experienced. It was to educate people to open their eyes to their own spirituality. It was to make people realize that enlightenment was an inherent right and the norm, not the rare exception. To do this, I realized that people needed to recover their physical and energy balance first, before delving into their spiritual search. Therefore, I utilized the energy-sensitizing and controlling techniques I learned during my long training process before achieving spiritual awakening. From the various exercises, meditation, and martial arts that I practised, I devised the most effective method of simple exercises designed to allow people to start on their road to physical, mental, and spiritual health. I called this ‘Dahn Hak.' I systematized this Dahn Hak technique, which consists of simple stretching, calisthenics, breathing techniques, and meditation, and sought to teach it to others to help them regain their health and balance. I started this in a public park, with one student, a victim of partial paralysis from a stroke.
Although Dahn Hak starts out as a physical exercise, its true purpose lies in helping the individual recover his physical health and ethical foundation on his way to becoming a ‘spiritual' person who is nonetheless successful in the everyday world. At the same time, Dahn Hak aims at the spiritual enlightenment not only of the individual but of the whole society and of humanity, for individual and group enlightenment are different sides of the same coin. They cannot be separated.
In fifteen years, this Dahn Hak exercise has grown to include more than one million members in over three hundred centres in South Korea alone, and close to one hundred thousand members in over fifty centres in the United States, including a meditation retreat centre in Sedona, Arizona, and a holistic health club in Closter, New Jersey. It has become a huge success, way beyond my initial dreams, because Dahn Hak gained a reputation for helping people to recover their health and balance in a simple, easy, and effective way. It has become an exercise trend, the choice among holistic exercises, for its eye-opening effectiveness in helping people recover their lost physical and energy balance. Then it is the individual's choice to explore further into their spirituality. It is a private choice that each one of us has to make. Nothing can be forced. And it is my sincere hope that Dahn Hak can help lead people on their path to spiritual health when they do make the choice, not as an alternative to their respective faith traditions, but as a means to help them become better Christians, Buddhists, or Muslims.
I have also fine-tuned Dahn Hak to develop a technique called ‘Brain Respiration,' through which you can literally use your brainpower to awaken your dormant spirituality. Brain Respiration strips away the mysticism from enlightenment and makes it an everyday reality for all. Brain Respiration lays the physiological foundation to this phenomenon called ‘enlightenment'.
That is what I ultimately want, for people to recover their hidden spirituality, and I want to make it as easy as possible for them. For that is my life's goal, to help people recover their inherent right to enlightenment. For that is what this world needs, a collective Enlightenment Revolution to sweep across the face of this Earth, allowing humanity to go beyond its current problems into a higher spiritual plane.
From Healing Society, copyright 2000 by Dr Seung Heun Lee, published in the United States by Hampton Roads.
|
Inspirational features 
