Ilchi Lee on Using Your Mind Well

From a translation of Ilchi Lee’s book The Power of the Brain

Just as our muscles improve with exercise, so, too, our minds improve with use. We can actually ruin our bodies through exercise, though, if we ignore how the exercise is to be done. In the same way, we can ruin our minds if we do not know how to use them and end up misusing them, instead. To use our minds well, we must first get to know our brains and become their close friends.

The Meaning of Karma

How does your life look? How can you live “right?” What life do you choose? You have already traveled far. Regardless of whether you want it or not, all the actions you took and the experiences you underwent are with you as a karmic record, influencing what you do now. However, the important thing is when you seek to choose your life, your power of choice also has the ability to cut off any lingering karmic connections. Of course, this does not mean that the information which is karma just disappears. Like it or not, karmic debt is a real debt you must pay, now or later. However, now you no longer will be led around helplessly by your karma but you can gain insight to use this information to achieve your ends. Prof Ilchi Lee writes many articles about healing society and dahn yoga.

By mentioning karma here, I don’t intend to talk about reincarnation or previous lives. Even if a previous life exists and can be recalled, it has no reality other than as a piece of information expressed in this current lifetime. When you buy a computer, it comes with an operating system installed. This is akin to karma. The operating system is karma. The computer is karma.

Some people buy a computer with Windows 98; some buy it with the latest XP version; others are saddled with an older version such as 3.1 or DOS. Some computers also run with the latest processor chip while some still run an XX286 chip. Just as Windows is already set up in your hardware and your computer is equipped with a processor chip, so is your karma expressed in your physical form and living conditions as soon as you are born. Except here there is no good or bad, or superior or inferior models, for information is essentially all zero. How can one zero be better than another? Your previous lifetimes can be compared to a period in which you installed “programs” and prepared your “computer” to do the work that you need to do in this lifetime. It doesn’t matter whether you recall your previous lifetime or not. It is just information, after all. In fact, instead of saying “record of my life,” it would be more accurate to say “record of a life as recorded in my brain.” Nothing matters except the realization that you are living in the here and now with various piles of information. Only this life is your life, not your previous life or your future incarnations.

ENLIQHTENMENTS FOR HEALINQ SOCIETY

This is why enlightenment is the beginning of a new journey. Chasing the butterfly, you suddenly remember. “Oh yes. I was on my way to the market to buy flour’” or: “I was on my way to a neighbor’s house to borrow a hammer.” This is enlightenment. So. you leave the butterfly behind (with some wistfulness) and continue with your original errand. This is where the teacher comes in. A teacher is someone who reminds you of the errand. However, the teacher does not run the errand for you. You have to go yourself, borrow the tool or buy the flour, and return home safely, without getting sidetracked. Only then will this journey end, and will your soul end its time as this particular incarnation.

The lake will then become just water again. The nucleus that held the soul together need no longer be maintained, for it has been satisfied. Therefore, the Life Current that coalesced around this nucleus is loosed from the chain that bound it to the soul. Once free, it goes back to its original condition of absolute freedom.

No one knows how long this freedom will last. The time of freedom, from another point of view, could be the time before the Life Current is called forth again to come together around another seed of hope and give shape to another soul about to embark on a new journey. It is getting ready to dream a new dream. Just as our bodies decay and provide material for new life, Life Current is recycled continuously to serve the needs of the soul. This process is happening naturally without waiting for someone to attach a label or meaning to it. Put in human terms, we could call it an act of sacrifice and highest love, for it willingly gives up absolute freedom to help one seed of hope to come to fruition and be realized. Read more articles by Ilchi Lee.

Enlightenment Is Not the End but the Beginning

These lines are copied from book of founder of dahn yoga Prof Ilchi Lee. The journey consists of a single seed of thought, which flowers and withers, returning to its original place. People often call the end of this journey “enlightenment.” What does enlightenment mean? What do you have to know to be enlightened? Is enlightenment the end? What could be behind enlightenment?

The crux of enlightenment is that there is nothing to be enlightened about. When you realize that there is nothing to be enlightened about, that is enlightenment. Does it sound funny? Fishy? Let us think for a moment. The conscious mind that so desires enlightenment is merely a temporary phenomenon without underlying reality. The real mind, which is the sea of nothingness from which all existence springs, has never not known something. To summarize, the mind that desires enlightenment is actually without reality, while the real mind is the definition of enlightenment itself. Who is it that wants to be enlightened, and to what? There is no enlightenment, and efforts to achieve enlightenment are by definition futile—this is true enlightenment.

Therefore, enlightenment is a new start for the journey, not the end. Until now, we wandered aimlessly through many lifetimes and went through untold experiences because we did not know how or why this journey started. But now we remember the original purpose of the journey, and this helps us find our way to the destination. This is the reason we need enlightenment. Have you ever gone out on an errand on a warm spring day and been led astray by the trembling beauty of a butterfly, forgetting the purpose of your errand? Your mother probably told you numerous times to go straight to the store and come back, a warning you promptly forgot. Your mother knew that although you would eventually return home, for there was nowhere else to go. the time of your return was open-ended.

Meaning cage

Within this magnificent garden, countless seeds are scattered and countless flowers bloom. Even now, you are scattering countless seeds of hopes and thoughts into a field of nothingness plowed and fertilized by the Life Current. The seeds of hopes you scatter into the field are even now taking root and causing the births of innumerable souls, actions, and lives. Just as you are living the life you have been given, they will live the lives that they have been given. Some will scatter in the wind while others will live out several lifetimes before finding their way back.

There are many book by Ilchi Lee in the market about brain education and dahn yoga. He said a seed, once planted, has the right to sprout, whether it be bad or good. You can choose whether to plant or not, or which seed to plant, but you have no right to gainsay a seed’s right to grow once it’s planted. A seed, once planted, will never just fade away. The seed will bring forth a life from which more seeds will arise. Thus the cycle continues endlessly.

There is no hidden meaning or intent in this cycle. It just goes on, continuously. It just is. There is, in fact, no meaning to life. Because this truth is too empty to bear, we look for even a grain of meaning and expand upon it and build it up until we become prisoners of the “meaning cage” of our own construction. We construct an artificial justification for our lives when life needs no justification. And while living thus forgetfully, we encounter an event that compels us to finish what we came to do and to go back to where we came from in the first place.