… longevity, vitality and life transformation, by Ilchi Lee (a summary by Pat Evert)
- Embracing a New Humanity and a New Earth
The key word here is decided. I have made a clear, unwavering decision that I will live to 120 years of age. It is not at all unrealistic to live one’s life with the expectation of living this long. I believe that the most important task in the second half of life is finding a purpose, one that will give the rest of our years meaning. I started a project in the small city of Kerikeri on the North Island of New Zealand. I am creating a residential school and community there where hundreds of people can experience a self-reliant, earth-friendly lifestyle in a place where humans and nature live in harmony—a beautiful woodland area of 380 acres. This place is called Earth Village. I wanted to give people what I call “the dream of the Earth Citizen,” where people transcend their small selves and begin to embrace others and the world. I am writing this book because I believe everyone can live this way, with a sense of purpose and vision for their lives—their entire lives, not just the first half.
1) The second half of life need not be a time of decline and regression. It can be your golden age—amazingly fulfilling and hopeful.
2) You can take charge of your physical health as you age. Help yourself have a longer and healthier life.
3) You have the power and potential to affect the future of the entire human species and the earth itself, as well as the lives of individuals around you.
The 120-year life is a global project for furthering the progress of the entire human species, not merely a project for our individual longevity.
- I’ve Decided to Live 120 Years
This is the lifespan generally accepted as biologically possible for human beings. So, I set as my expected lifespan the maximum number of years that current scientific understanding permits, and I then chose to redesign my life from that 120-year perspective. My choice stemmed from my desire to be of service to the world and to take responsibility for the great dream that I’ve set for my life. I began to manage my body and mind more actively. My brain seems to be secreting hormones that increase positivity and vitality, and I live more passionately than ever before. According to 2015 United Nations data, the global population of people over the age of 100 is about 500,000. That’s a fourfold increase from 20 years ago, and it is predicted that the number will increase even more rapidly in the future. I think the time of a 120-year life as the norm could come much faster than we think. The average human life expectancy was no more than 47 years in 1900, but it has continued to increase as nutrition and hygiene have improved and medical technology has developed, and it is now 79 years. In Japan, whose people are among the longest lived in the world, you multiply your current age by 0.7. Only then, it’s claimed, do you get the age you actually feel, physically and mentally, because these days we live much more youthfully than previous generations did. A 70-year-old is 49. What I chose—living to be 120—is impossible without the blessings of nature. It is widely known that eating less is one secret to long life. According to one study, people who eat moderately can expect five more years of life. People who have strong social connections live an average of 7.5 years longer than those who are isolated. Reducing the time you spend sitting each day to less than three hours has the effect of extending your life expectancy by two years. Make up your mind to live to a certain age instead of simply wishing to live that long. Do I have a goal and a design for the time I have left? What will living to the age I’ve chosen look like? What do I want to achieve and who will I become during that time? To design the second half of your life you must have a purpose or goal that gives that time meaning.
- What Is Humanity’s True Path
Many people are entering the era of longevity without any mental preparation, and they will face the challenge of 20 to 40 years of inactivity. This is a situation without historical precedent: 20 to 40 percent of the total population has 20 to 40 years of idle time on their hands. By thinking creatively, finding answers, and preparing solutions together, we will open the possibility of creating a new, mature, harmonious culture that combines the passion and drive of youth and young adulthood with the wisdom and broad-mindedness of old age. Success is the paradigm that pervades the first half of life. Despite what we gain from this period of success, it keeps us stuck in the paradigm of competition. There is no true peace within a paradigm of success. There is no obvious paradigm defining the second half of life. The path humanity walks in the first half of life is clear. I believe that a paradigm representing the second half of life is urgently needed to resolve this issue. I’d like to suggest completion as the value we should pursue in the second half of our lives. Completion means everything is realized and to make complete or whole. What do you make complete? Yourself, your life. Completion isn’t about the visible world or anything external. It is about the world of consciousness, a sense that allows us to feel what is going on inside us. The degree to which your life has been completed is determined solely by the satisfaction and fulfillment you feel in your own heart. The key to living a life of completion is living the life you really want. In short, people want, more than anything else, the inner satisfaction that comes from the realization of their highest values. You have to find your true self so you can say, “This is who I really am.” We need not grieve that the labels we once used to define ourselves are falling away. We should instead open ourselves to the possibilities that such changes can bring us. We are unquestionably freer and less tied down than before. We can now live as the people we really want to be, filling our lives with what we want and adjusting our pace for ourselves. The energy of the soul, that feeling, is the essence of your being. Your soul is the true self you are seeking. We should tell our true self that we will do everything we can for the rest of our lives to realize and complete its wishes. Self-realization is living the life your true self really wants. What does your true self want? Growth and completion. It is a big self connected and one with all things. When you have awakened from the small self at the individual level to the big self at the universal level, your consciousness expands that much more. If the first half of our lives was a time for learning, possessing, and accumulating, then the second half is a time for sharing and giving. If you continue to hold on to things as you did in your period of success and don’t practice emptying yourself, then the moment of your death will be terrifying and unhappy. Achieving your completion doesn’t reduce opportunities for others to achieve their completion. You do not become less peaceful by sharing your peace with others. Success is a race to be the first to cross the finish line, but completion is like a race where there is a winner’s cup ready for each runner. The world is no longer a battlefield where we have to fight to survive; it is instead an entirely honest field where we share our labors and help each other bring in the harvest. Our lives will finally be whole when we walk the path of completion.
- How Do We Achieve Completion?
Death is, in fact, an incredible blessing for our spiritual awakening. I feel that death is a great design of the Creator, prepared for the completion of human life. I often use as an illustration the story of the caterpillar’s transformation. A caterpillar grows as it spends its days eating leaves and doing little else. It does this until, at a certain time, it stops eating and starts drawing silk out of its body to make a cocoon. After a long period of patience and transformation in the cocoon, the caterpillar one day spreads its dazzling wings and soars through the sky as a beautiful butterfly. This is the mystery of life, the principle of nature, not something that can be manufactured artificially. Just as all caterpillars have genes allowing them to become butterflies, in Sundo, humans are believed to have a seed within them that allows them to reach completion. This seed of wholeness is the soul. Divine-human unity is the individual spiritual nature inside of us becoming one with the total spiritual nature of the universe. When the individual feels connected with the whole and experiences divine nature, we call this divine-human unity. When you live a life of practicing, teaching, and sharing what you have realized, then the energy of your soul matures and the energy of your divine nature shines more brightly. The body belongs to the earth, the soul to Heaven. There’s a standard for the growth of the soul’s energy: your upper, middle, and lower dahnjons (the energies of your brain, heart, and belly) must be aligned and feel unified. In other words, your thoughts (brain), feelings (heart), and actions (gut) shouldn’t be separate; they should be one, and you should act with integrity. It has nothing to do with recognition by others. It’s enough for your soul to be satisfied with itself. You have your soul, which is the seed of wholeness inside you, and you continue to develop it. We all have inside of us a bright, pure, noble mind that resembles Heaven, a mind that can embrace and love everyone and everything. Only you can raise your true value and make your life more precious. Those who create every day with the goal of the completion of their souls are true artists of life. In the Korean language, there are words that express the stages of life as a process of the soul’s growth. A person in the period of growth is called an eorini (child), a person in the period of success is called an eoreun (adult), and a person in the period of completion is called an eoreushin (elder). The common denominator is the word eol. The eol can be called the soul or spirit. The first, eorini (child), means someone whose eol or soul is still small and immature. They put their own ego or emotions first, what they want. Eoreun (adult) means someone whose soul has grown. Adults are people whose souls have matured, allowing them to take responsibility for their own affairs and to embrace those around them. An adult who has entered old age is called an eoreushin (elder). Eoreushin means someone whose spirit (eol) is like a god (shin), someone who has brilliant, godlike wisdom. They are enlightened elders whose divine energy in their upper dahnjon now shines brightly. Eoreushin, describes a senior on the inside, someone with wisdom and a bright spirit. Their souls have godlike luminosity, a numinous energy. “Arirang,” is a song about a life lived awakening. Arirang means the joy of awakening to the true self. As in the words of “Arirang,” let us gladly accept the ups and downs of our paths in life, which help us to awaken to our true selves. Let each of us gladly walk that road, being grateful for every lesson that awaits us on life’s rugged way. Then we will begin to see the beauty and loveliness of our life path and of the people we meet along the way on our journey toward our true self and completion.
- Reflect on the First Half of Your Life, Design the Second
Renewal doesn’t just happen. It comes only to those who consciously pursue it. The era of longevity stretching out before us holds infinite potential for completing our lives as we want. However, it will end as an unfulfilled possibility unless you perceive it and consciously design the second half of your life. We must have the courage to look calmly back over our lives and gladly sweep away everything that conceals who we truly are. I’m not telling you to distort your past, but to look at it from a new perspective. A single question captivated Frankl while he was living in the concentration camp: Is there some reason for a human being to continue to live with constant suffering in an environment completely beyond his control? “Yes,” he concluded. Frankl endured the miseries of life in a concentration camp and decided that there was only one difference between those who died and those who survived: meaning. “Those who have a ‘why’ to live for,” he wrote, “can bear almost any ‘how’.” “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing,” Frankl wrote in his Man’s Search for Meaning, “the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” What’s important is to realize that you have created all your life so far. Those who think that way can also create their present and their future. More than anything else, love and be grateful to yourself for making it through all those moments to arrive where you are now. Humbly accept all the lessons life has taught you, and turn the story of the first half of your life into fertilizer that will allow the second half to blossom beautifully. Honestly acknowledge and learn from our foolish mistakes. We can’t go forward if we are clinging to the past.
It’s about what attitude you have in dealing with the work you do and the people you meet. Our life—our work and our relationships—is a wonderful time of study for completion and the best source of material for meditation. Do you really want to live free? Then you have to design your life so you can live that way. Long or short, time just flows by unless we live consciously. There is a Korean saying: “Water flows where directed.” Where will the water of your life flow? The time has come to create a new stream for your life to follow. Only if you have an overarching direction can you use your remaining time independently and creatively. It is also wise to accept gladly a body that’s aging in accordance with the principles of nature. What we need most is to listen to our own inner voices, our souls, and to choose how we really want to live and what sort of people we will be. Ask again and again what it is that you earnestly want in your heart and what kind of life will bring real joy to your soul. I made my choice to live to 120 as I walked a woodland path in Earth Village in Kerikeri, New Zealand. It takes about one hour to slowly walk this beautiful forest trail, which I’ve named The Way of New Life. The great dream of contributing to a healthier, more beautiful, more peaceful earth, and that they would choose to live to be 120 years old. I call the first 60 years your congenital destiny and the next 60 years your acquired destiny. Your congenital destiny is the destiny you were born with and the one the world has constantly imposed on you, and your acquired destiny is the destiny you create for yourself by your own choices and effort. Even when you’re older, you should be self-sufficient in health, happiness, and peace. We can become the true masters of our health, happiness, and peace when we learn how to create them for ourselves instead of relying on the outside environment. To provide for your own health, happiness, and peace, you need to train your physical power, heart power, and brain power. If you don’t know where or how to begin designing your old age, try starting with physical power. When your body develops strength, your ambition naturally grows along with it, and you find that you have new ideas and new things you want to try.
- Physical Power Is Life – Just Move
Health is a springboard and shortcut to happiness and peace. Currently, 87 percent of US adults over the age of 65 have at least one chronic illness, while 68 percent have two or more. Out of 224 countries, the United States ranks 42nd in life expectancy. To treat their illnesses, Americans rely heavily on medications, more than any other nation in the world. Although the United States holds 5 percent of the world’s population, it consumes 75 percent of the world’s prescription drugs. The way to counteract the current situation, I believe, is to focus on your own self-care and to become more self-sufficient and less dependent on healthcare institutions. By using your own body to heal your body on a daily basis. Diseases always arise from blockage in the flow of energy. If you grow closer to your body, you can’t help but grow distant from hospitals and pharmacies. Exercise is truly a supplement that has a powerful effect; it’s an exceptional method for enhancing life expectancy, health, and energy levels. The effects of exercise are innumerable, but it especially helps slow down sarcopenia (muscle loss in old age). It’s up to you whether you will just stand by, lamenting the decline of your body, or move actively and build your physical strength. We have plenty of potential to live vital, healthy lives at any age, depending on how we take care of ourselves. Will you just give up and watch as aging and disease come for you, or will you actively manage your health as the master of your body? People who have severe chronic diseases or physical disabilities, does not mean that they can’t have happiness or peace. The times when you train your body and overcome your limitations are moments when you encounter your true self and feel with your whole body that you are truly alive. What I suggest is opportunistic exercise. This is a lifestyle approach that we use to exercise whenever we get the opportunity. I can definitely tell you that these exercises really work. My body became lighter, more agile, and more vigorous through opportunistic exercise.
For One-Minute Exercise, every hour do a minute of moderate to vigorous exercise that effectively works your muscles and raises your heart rate in a short period of time, such as push-ups, squats, sit-ups, jumping jacks, jumping in place, and bear walking. The more often you move, the better. Ideally, it’s best to get up and move your body every 15 minutes. Even simple, ordinary movement is okay. Intermittent movement that breaks up the habit of uninterrupted sitting is important for maximizing quality of life. Your breathing rate increases, and your lungs expand and contract more frequently to discharge toxins and send more oxygen into your blood. These biochemical changes strengthen and renew the brain, particularly the areas associated with memory and learning. Your mind will really wake up and become alert after one minute of exercise. As we do one minute of exercise once an hour, we tell our bodies and emotions, “I am the master.” In the moment you do one minute of exercise, you can experience a state free of thoughts. Your mind focuses on your body, and all other thoughts disappear. The best way to simplify your thoughts is to focus your consciousness in your body. Best of all, One-Minute Exercise increases your level of passion. Passion is hope. Kindle the fires of your passion through One-Minute Exercise.
Longevity walking – Instead of just walking because you have to walk, tell yourself, “I’ll exercise as I walk,” then walking becomes a means of promoting health for long life, a means of creating happiness. Longevity Walking returns us to the pure, healthy gait we had when we were young children. Energetic children put their weight on the front of their feet as they step out, with a lively step, adventurously going toward whatever lies ahead. Walk on the balls of your feet, rather than the heels. Going up and down hills from morning to evening is a way of walking that puts your weight in the front of the feet. Another point about Longevity Walking is that the feet are kept parallel, like the number 11. If you walk with your feet parallel, your legs and lower core will tense, and your lower back will straighten. Walking is a whole-body exercise that mobilizes all 600-plus muscles that make up our bodies and the 200-plus bones that move with them. It stimulates the many nerves stretching out through the soles of the feet and promotes active blood circulation and metabolism in the legs, playing an important role in training the muscles in the lower body and helping to prevent aging. For only about 2 percent of body weight, the brain is the body part that uses the most energy. It uses 15 percent of the blood leaving the heart and about 25 percent of the oxygen that enters the body through breathing, even during rest. Walking not only delays brain-related aging, like shrinkage in brain size and functional decline, but it can also increase brain size. Busy legs, it is said, make for a long life. Our legs are our source of vitality. The vitality of the human body depends on how well we maintain our muscles. The more muscle you have in your legs, the more energetic you are.
The basic idea of Belly Button Healing is to rhythmically and repeatedly compress the belly button. Promoting good digestion, facilitating blood circulation, breathing deeply, and strengthening the immune system are essential components of good health. The button that turns these on all at once is the belly button. Pressing it rhythmically about 100 times per minute for 100 to 300 repetitions. Afterwards you breathe in, push your belly out and visualize life energy entering and filling it through the “nose” of your navel. Breathe imagining your umbilical cord in your mother’s womb, as if you were going back to that infinitely comfortable and peaceful time when you were receiving the love of your mother in that safe, cozy place. The most direct effect of Belly Button Healing is intestinal health improvement. Our intestines are deeply involved in detoxification and immunity. Rhythmically and regularly pressing the belly button activates the peristalsis of the small intestine muscle, aiding digestion and making bowel movements regular and smooth. Three hundred to 1,000 species of microbes live in the intestines. The function of our gut is so important that it has a direct line to the brain via a cranial nerve called the vagus nerve. More than 2,000 neural fibers connect our head brain with our gut brain. Approximately 50 percent of our dopamine, and more than 95 percent of our serotonin, is created in the gut, while only 3 percent is made in the brain. Improving intestinal health can increase serotonin and dopamine secretion, enabling us to maintain a positive mood and to feel satisfied and motivated. The belly button is the most effective point for directly stimulating the vagus nerve from outside the body because it has few layers of muscle beneath it. When you lack vitality or you’re tired, press your belly button for even one minute and then do Belly Button Breathing; you will soon feel your body recovering vigor and growing warmer. The goal of repeatedly compressing the belly button and then breathing is to enhance vitality. One-Minute Exercise, Longevity Walking, Belly Button Healing, you can master your mind once you have mastered your body.
- Discover New Sources of Happiness
Suddenly facing social roles greatly reduced during retirement, people are likely to find their self-esteem withering away. Emotions are not you, but yours. Emotions are merely a variable environment that affects you like any other surrounding that you experience. You can change your emotions because they are only your internal environment, not the essence of who you are. Our days are not always sunny but sometimes cloudy, windy, or rainy. Be aware of your emotional state and to develop the strength to escape from it. That is the power of the soul. Changing your ideas, giving your brain a good message—this is a first step that can change your environment. Obstacles are there to be overcome; we are trained and grow stronger in the process of overcoming them. The first reason many people feel unhappy is that they are dissatisfied with the environment they face. Even with a good house, car, and partner—commonly thought to be conditions for happiness—tedium and boredom are bound to come. Why? They have failed to discover something granting them true meaning and motivation in life. This lack of a sense of purpose is the second reason people feel they are not happy. Is there no way to live our lives so that when we close our eyes on our final day, we can say, “I really lived a good life.” You can still enjoy food and sex, and you can exercise ownership and control through economic activities. However, if you seek to relieve your boredom only through the joys that come from satisfying such desires, a meaningful life and true happiness will gradually grow more distant. Old age is a time to find new sources of happiness. Old age is a time to seriously focus on finding the happiness that springs up from within, not the happiness that comes from external things such as wealth and power. The inner spring of happiness never runs dry, and it offers truly pure water that can quench the thirst of souls weary of a tedious, mundane life. Appetite and libido decline naturally with age, and hormonal changes reshape our physical desires. There are at least three ways to give us true inner satisfaction and lead us to a life of completion.
Pure, unconditional love doesn’t seek to possess, and it doesn’t seek to control. The reason love turns into unhappiness at some moment is that it seeks to possess and control. They’re happy if the other person loves them, unhappy if they don’t. Conversely, the happiness of those who have the pure love of the soul is centered within themselves. They feel true happiness as they share the pure love in their hearts. They focus on loving others instead of trying to draw the energy of love from others. They don’t expect or calculate that something will come back to them in exchange for loving the other person. They believe in the soul and in the bright, true nature of the other person and try to develop it instead of trap the other person in a mold, assessing and judging them. Older couples can be soulmates and fellow travelers who walk the path of life together, contributing to each other’s spiritual growth. Then they’ll have subtler but greater happiness in their golden years. There’s nothing that says you must give the energy of love in your heart to just one person. When we look around, we find many people who need our love and help. That’s why many enlightened elders choose to volunteer or to contribute their talents to their neighbors or communities. You feel incredible joy when you love and accept others unconditionally. Hong means widely, and ik means to benefit, so it means that a Hongik person works for the good of many people. Hongik is big love. You bring unhappiness on yourself if, obsessed only with small love, you wait for love to find you. Our hearts are truly happy, free, and peaceful when we have big love. A life of Hongik, of truly living for the good of all, is the best method for the growth of the soul in old age.
When we enter old age, realizations happen inside us like puzzle pieces falling into place as we begin to understand, bit by bit, the essence of nature and life—once an unsolved riddle. This is the joy of enlightenment. A life of 60-plus years give you a well-rounded, embracing perspective on people, life, and the world. That’s why I think it is a great blessing that we have old age in life. Old age is the optimal time for awakening.
Those who have experienced it even once know how great the joy of creation is. True satisfaction and happiness are felt when we confirm our self-worth, when we think that we have value. Carrying out something we feel is needed in our daily lives, improving something that feels uncomfortable, attempting something we’ve never tried before, taking a new approach to something. If you want to taste the joy of even greater creation, attempt something you’ve never done before. Start a hobby you’ve really wanted to try, or begin doing volunteer activity for a community organization. You’ll feel yourself filling with pride as you realize, “I can help other people! I can contribute something to society!”
- Let Go of Attachments to Find Peace
What can you do to become more peaceful? Not being at peace means that your soul is not free, and the reason your soul is not free is that it is attached to something. Just as you can’t use your hands freely if they’re holding something, your soul cannot be free if your mind is clinging to something.
First is attachment to wealth and material things. You could share a little of what you have with those around you and use your material abundance to experience the nonmaterial joys of Hongik, awakening, and creation. The second common attachment is to power or prestige.
Third, people can become attached to other people. Attachment to somebody manifests itself in two forms: love and hate. How psychologically hard is it when someone you love leaves, or when you leave someone you love? How, then, can we love without attachment? To do this, we need to maintain the freedom of our souls. You can gain the freedom of your soul when you transcend the emotion of romantic love, sublimating it as peace. If you continue to live without letting go of the attachment of hate, you will never be happy. Will we live out our lives continuously troubled by such regretful emotions, or release them and be free? Victim consciousness is one of the most overwhelming emotions. Begin by escaping from the idea that you are a victim. Victim consciousness keeps creating victimizers and giving rise to negative energy. This is a terrifying way to immerse yourself in unhappiness. The way to escape from victim consciousness is to quickly switch your awareness of yourself from victim to victimizer. Try to change your thinking so you realize that you’re not the only one who was hurt, and that, in fact, you may have hurt the other person too. It’s a matter of taking responsibility for yourself. It’s about being able to tell yourself, “I have been my own victimizer. Realize that you—not someone else—are the one who made you who you are and created your situation as it is now. You switch to a positive mode, telling yourself, “I am the master of my life. I’ll no longer resent others, wallowing in victim consciousness. Your resentment changes to forgiveness, tolerance, and gratitude when you are the master of your life. Just as a hot air balloon rises into the sky when we release the sandbags holding it down, one by one, our souls can be lighter and freer when we let go of our attachments. Peace of mind comes when we let go of our attachments. We have come to earth for the growth and completion of our souls.
- Don’t Fear Solitude – Enjoy It
Don’t fear loneliness; accept it. And enjoy solitude. Everyone comes into the world alone and leaves it alone. So a human is originally a lonely being. Some face the substance of their loneliness head on and experience an awakening of consciousness through deep reflection on the essence of human life. They choose life on a new level of spiritual maturity, and they gain inner joy from the experience. Through that enlightenment, loneliness is no longer dark and depressing but changes into brilliant solitude. When you have a purpose and a vision in your heart, there are times you are destined to go against the current instead of just flowing with it. For me that solitude was a time of enlightenment and creation. I encountered who I really was. The soul headed toward completion feels brilliant solitude. It’s a fullness that comes in the moment when, alone, you connect with everything as one. These moments come to you when you’re alone yet connected with all things. You realize that the fundamental loneliness within you can never be filled by another person or by anything outside you, that this lonely emptiness is only filled by being completely one with the great life force of the universe. They must live lives of embracing the brilliant solitude in their hearts and sharing pure love, the energy of their souls, with others. Great compassion can be felt when it transcends human affection. It’s easy for human affection to give birth to attachment. You feel the whole only when you are completely alone and lonely. If you go forward with brilliant solitude in your heart, you become what I call a truly fragrant person, one who has the greatest possible attractiveness, like a flower that must be admired for its beauty.
- Give Your Brain Hopes and Dreams
Hurting all over and worsening memory are avoidable physiological symptoms that we all experience. Brain scientists say yes. For the most part, we can protect the health of our brain just as we do the rest of our body. Scientific research shows that body and brain health do not deteriorate naturally with age. Rather, the rate of aging differs significantly from person to person, depending on how well we take care of ourselves. Not only do new neurons develop even when we’re older, but new networks are created between neurons, and brain function can improve. They are changing every moment, no matter how old they are, thanks to the brain’s amazing plasticity. In addition to the thinking and memory roles we commonly attribute to the brain, basic physiological functions for maintaining life, such as blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, and hormones, are controlled by the brain. When your brain improves, everything in your life improves. There is one thing, though, that stands above the rest as necessary nutrition for the human body, mind, and spirit: hope. Hopes and dreams are the best way to activate and engage your brain. People who had a goal in life were found to have a risk of death 15 percent lower than those who did not. People who have purpose, who have hopes and dreams, will naturally be more positive about their lives and more proactive in their self-care—exercising more, eating better, and managing their stress. You don’t have to be young, have a lot of money, or any special talent. And if you can’t find it, then you create it. Without hope, your brain grows weaker, no matter how much good food you eat, how diligently you exercise, or how many crossword puzzles you solve. Brains live on dreams. When you give up the thought of creating a better tomorrow, your brain ages and becomes helpless. It starts emitting that energy of helplessness to your whole body and to the world around you. If you keep dreaming, actively designing the rest of your life, your brain will be filled with hope and a new sense of expectation. What sort of messages and information are you giving your brain concerning old age? What information are you accepting from others? It’s important not to leave your brain in its default state, doing what it’s always done, but instead constantly give it new tasks and stimulation. A basic principle of the brain’s operation is that it improves when stimulated and declines without stimulation. Hopes and dreams are the greatest stimuli we can give our brains. To properly convey messages to your brain, you must first be clear about what you want. I.e.
I’m overflowing with a life force that will allow me to live to 120. I’m filled with the energy of infinite love and creation. I will complete the Earth Village as I live to 120 in health and happiness.
To enable your brain to accept the messages you give it, you have to quiet your body and mind through relaxation. Brain Wave Vibration is a good way. The energy system of our bodies, and the operation of our brains are amazing in their greatness and perfection. If you continue to visualize what you want, you will be able to attract such energy. Now keep repeating a phrase that you want to say to your brain. When you finish this meditation, express your gratitude to your brain and your soul. When we enter old age, we reflect on how we have lived so far and think seriously about what we will leave behind. Our spiritual sensitivity matures more in old age than at any other stage of life. That feeling that you’re connected with that infinite, eternal something, transcends space and time. It’s the feeling of not lacking anything, of just being filled with infinite gratitude and peace. I am awestruck by the care of the Creator, who designed us so that the spiritual senses of our brains would mature in our period of completion more than at any other time. A life of completion through which we can fully realize our absolute value is the greatest dream and hope we can have in our old age.
- Cultivate Yourself Continuously
Life is suffering. Life is transient, sooner or later we have to leave everything behind. Have we come into the world and struggled so much for nothing more than to feel that sense of futility? The soul is our substance and the essence of life. When our souls encounter and unite with the divine nature, we experience incredible joy and peace along with a great, bright light. It is a state of cosmic unity in which you transcend your small self, your ego, to become one with the universe, the great life energy of the cosmos. A life centered on the growth of the soul, not the needs of the ego, begins now in earnest. I highly recommend meditation. Just as exercise should be incorporated into your lifestyle, so too should meditation be a part of your daily life. sleeping is the simplest and easiest form of meditation. Before going to sleep, you breathe deeply and slowly, meditating on filling your body with life energy. You can do breathing meditation even while you walk by counting your footsteps, inhaling every fourth step, and then exhaling after four more steps. Develop a clear state of consciousness, free from thoughts or emotions like desire, fear, anxiety, and loneliness. Continuous self-development is essential in the journey of a life lived in pursuit of completion. Everyone has a creative nature and a need to realize that creative nature. Being able to smile more often, overlooking the mistakes of others with a smile, telling someone more easily that you love them, and being true to yourself—these are also the results of self-development.
- Share and Give
The life you truly want, not the life others expect you to live, is a life lived true to your soul. They dream of their souls becoming happier as they express and share pure love with others. Amazingly, this spring of pure love in each of our hearts never runs dry, no matter how much we use it; in fact, it grows more abundant the more we draw from it. This is the life of people who have awakened. That is a life of Hongik, of working for the good of all. It is extremely important to find work that the soul in our heart truly wants us to do, not what others expect of us. We need to find the kind of work we will never regret doing, but would regret never having done. When you know whether you are your ego or your true self, you awaken to your true values and can make choices based on those values. Seniors do social work or, contributing a portion of their income, engage in charitable activities to make their communities better places to live. What could be more satisfying than using the precious time and energy called “life” to somehow contribute to other people and the world before you die? Find what it is that your soul really wants to do.
- Be Close to Nature
visit natural places often, wherever you may be and whenever you get the chance. I realized that before I was watching Sedona, Sedona was watching me! The true master of this land was none other than nature herself. I had another realization in that same moment: I am a part of nature. Nature and I are one whole, not separate things. You can experience a great integration of consciousness wherein you are interconnected with everything you once perceived as separate from yourself. If you wish to spend your old age aiming for spiritual completion, grow as close to nature as possible. A nature-friendly life helps you let go of your ego. The word ego signifies the false identity that an individual holds, the self that appears to exist separately from nature and others. This dualistic worldview, which perceives the individual ego as subject and everything else, even nature, as objects separate from self, is at the root of most problems on this planet. The ego usually falls away in the instant you feel oneness with nature. That becomes possible when you feel nature with every cell in your body. The separation consciousness of the ego vanishes on its own, and great awakening comes. Nature has an amazing power to purify the energy of our thoughts and emotions, returning us to our original, natural state. Personal relationships are a process of learning a harmony that embraces even the differences between people. But it can be uncomfortable when such differences put us in conflict, so we end up avoiding spending time with people. With nature, though, we don’t need to worry about those clashes. Why? Because nature doesn’t judge us. She accepts and embraces us just as we are. When we open our hearts, we can hear what nature is saying to us. “Have courage! It’s all right. You can do it! I love you.” When we open up, nature comes into our hearts, and the naturalness within us revives because of nature’s energy of pure love. Then we say, “I am nature” and “I am one with nature.” Oh, you seniors who have endured difficult lives, find comfort in nature. It will heal the wounds you’ve suffered and open your closed heart. Nature always sends us the energy of infinite love and blessings, a complete energy that humans cannot fabricate. If you want to obtain perfect energy, let yourself be charged with the infinite energy of nature. We can live right now, breathing and active, because we have nature, our cosmic parents. Just as physical parents give their sacrificial love to their children, our cosmic parents give humanity their unconditional love—and they demand nothing in exchange for that love. A nature-friendly life prepares us to return to the bosom of nature after death.
- What We Leave Behind
Life in old age holds an important key for solving many problems in our society and for ushering in a new age. The elderly are becoming the center of society. Seniors can help develop our society in innovative ways, or they can simply increase the burden on the generations supporting them. That’s why I believe that a revolution in the consciousness of seniors and the emergence of enlightened elders are absolutely essential. This culture would be one in which seniors awaken to realize that their substance is life energy and that self and others, people and nature—all of us—are interconnected as one. The consciousness of seniors must awaken. Younger generations need tolerant, benevolent love that can warm their increasingly cold hearts. They need to accept old age as an opportunity for maturity and for the completion of life. If seniors gather the wisdom and experience they have built up over their lives and work for the common good, it will have a positive effect on all areas of society. The source of human life is nature. When nature gets sick, humans cannot avoid getting sick, too. Human diseases caused by environmental pollution are increasing at a rapid pace worldwide. And we must care for the ecosystem of the earth itself. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. Our only hope is to transcend our separation consciousness, realize that we are all one with nature, and understand fully that nature is the source of every one of our lives. The world is not a collection of separate things; everything is interconnected by energy. We share everything in the global environment. If we can reduce the tremendous resources spent on armed forces and use them instead to protect the natural environment and recover the damage we have caused to nature, we can leave clearer skies and cleaner waters to the coming generations and other life forms on our planet. The older generation, as the enlightened elders of our time, has a responsibility to work to ensure that the way they live in their old age will improve life on the planet. Otherwise, we are just increasing the amount we take from the earth without giving anything in return. Before we are members of any specific country, race, or religion, we are citizens of the earth. We must gain the understanding that the earth is our home. And other humans, animals, and plants are your family, beings who share the same home, this earth. We have a natural desire to contribute, even if only a little, to making a better world. The older generation not only has plenty of time but also the passion to pour their energy into meaningful work.
- A Special Invitation to Earth Village
I have come to love my life more as I’ve gone through all those moments. I now know my true identity more clearly and understand more fully the value and purpose of my life. This book has further increased my hope for humanity, because it is for people who, like you, want to live the second half of life according to their higher selves. I think that people getting ready for or living in their period of completion (i.e., the second half of their lives) need a kind of gap year. However long it is, I would like them to take that time to focus entirely on themselves, calmly looking back over the first half of their lives and then designing the second half. You will truly be able to start a life of Chunhwa when you have encountered a whole new self beyond what you had been thinking of as “me.” You will discover the true self that had always been hidden deep within you, beyond your thoughts and emotions. That is your true value, the value of humanity, the value of life. We must unhesitatingly choose to design new lives for ourselves. Our brains start designing a life of Chunhwa, the life of completion we really want. I want to enable everyone who visits Earth Village to find that dream and that passion. That is why I am creating Earth Village. We might as well use that life energy to passionately achieve our dreams.
Hidden in Plain Sight 