for Advanced Energy Development and Healing SFQ SPRING FOREST QIGONGSpring Forest Qigong Level Three Manual The course manual is for your personal use only. Copyright 2003-2009 Chunyi Lin. All worldwide rights are reserved and exclusively owned. ISBN 0-9740944-6-3 The “Yin-Yang Circle” with the “I Ching” marking is a trademark of Chunyi Lin and Spring Forest Qigong Printed in the United States of America Second Printing - August 2009 Notice: This manual and all Spring Forest Qigong teaching and learning materials are intended for your education of healthful practices. This manual and the other learning materials are not intended as a replacement for any medical treatment or therapy by a physician or other licensed health care provider. Rather, this manual and the other learning materials are intended to help you broaden your understanding of health and wellness and help you make informed choices of health options. Any application of the information in this manual and the other learning materials is at the student’s discretion and sole responsibility. Cover design by Pixel Farms and RAD designs, LLC Illustrations by Andrea Wallace and Phillips PublishingBiography Chunyi Lin is a certified international qigong master and the creator of Spring Forest Qigong. His fluency in numerous Chinese dialects provided him the rare opportunity to study with many of the most respected qigong masters in his native China. He has been teaching qigong and using qigong techniques to help others for more than twenty years. Master Lin was formerly a college professor in Guangdon Province in China and currently serves as the director of qigong programs at Anoka-Ramsey Community College in Anoka, Minnesota. He also sees people for private healing ssions at the Spring Forest Qigong Center in Eden Prairie, Minnesota; teaches four levels of Spring Forest Qigong; and has created a series of learning materials for students. He is a frequent keynote speaker at national health conferences. Since coming to the United States in 1995, Master Lin has helped thousands and thousands of people learn about the powerful, healing benefits of Spring Forest Qigong. He now devotes all of his time to the teaching of Spring Forest Qigong and to helping others. His vision is of “a healer in every family and a world without pain.” Master Lin lives with his family in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota.Table of Contents Introduction Purpose Objectives Focus Spirituality and Healing The Teachings of the Tao Consciousness Understanding How to Use Your Consciousness Using Your Consciousness to Help Others The Importance of Your Belief System The Difference Between Spirit and Soul The Emptiness/Oneness Behaviors & Techniques That Help with Deep Meditation Third Eye Training Opening Your Third Eye When Your Third Eye Opens Different Levels of Third-Eye Opening Building a Strong Foundation Fasting How to Fast Two-Day Fast Three-Day Fast Swallowing Energy Long-Distance Healing Understanding Long-Distance Detecting Techniques for Long-Distance Detecting Visualization Techniques Body Techniques 40 40 44 44Techniques for Long-Distance Healing Standard Healing Telephone Healing Finger-Growing Game Group Healing Face-to-Face Group Healing Long-Distance Group Healing Color Healing Message Water Technique One Technique Two Message Water Practice Helping People with Specific Problems Cancer New Outlook on Life Cancer-Clearing Technique Kidney Energy Pancreas and Liver Energy Skin, Throat, or Large Intestine Cancer Kidney Cancer Breast, Prostate, or Bladder Cancer Brain Tumor Lung Cancer Children with Cancer Helpful Technique for All Cancers Collar Bone Points Stroke Stones Anatomy Call Upon Your Master’s Energy For Protection Protecting Your Family and Yourself 46 46 50 52 33 55 59 61Aura Reading Observing Auras Aura Color Be Thoughtful in What You Reveal Closing Statement 88 88 89 92 93Introduction Purpose The primary purpose of Level Three is to help you awaken and/or strengthen your spiritual energy and take it to a higher level of consciousness, where you experience a stronger connection with the vibration of unconditional love in the universe. This leads to living a more heart- centered and loving life along with being able to help yourself and others heal more quickly and from more critical health challenges. Objectives To achieve this you will be focusing on four objectives: 1. Opening your third eye 2. Expanding your understanding of the universe and consciousness 3. Deepening your spiritual growth 4. Learning more advanced techniques to heal yourself and others of more critical health challenges Focus Advanced techniques of energy work all relate to the third eye. When your third eye opens, your ability to use your unconditional love and spiritual energy increases dramatically and so does your confidence in your ability to help others. In order to open the third eye you have to be able to control your mind while in meditation. You do this by increasing your ability to focus on one object for a longer time, which enables you to get into the emptiness/oneness of the universe. It is in the emptiness/oneness that you can more deeply purifyyourself and come to the realization that the most powerful healing energy in the universe and in you is unconditional love. When you understand the reality of the universe and consciousness, you can go more quickly and much more deeply into the emptiness/oneness, which allows you to strengthen your spiritual energy and increase the connection to your God Then the healing for yourself and others happens faster, more powerfully and more completely. But please remember that while opening your third eye is very helpful and important for tapping into your deeper healing abilities, it is just a technique. Techniques, like the specific ones you learned in Level Two, are always of secondary importance. The most important aspect in healing yourself and helping others to heal more completely is your sincere desire to help and the love, kindness, and forgiveness you hold in your heart—your unconditional love for all. As your spiritual growth deepens, you experience more moments of enlightenment, more moments when you see and experience the truth of the universe, and a more consistent connection of oneness with your God. This allows unconditional love to direct your life.Spirituality and Healing The Teachings of the Tao Understanding the universe is very important for our meditation and also for healing ourselves and helping others heal. In Spring Forest Qigong, our guiding principles come from the teachings of the Tao. In Tao teaching, an empty circle is a symbol representing the beginning of the universe, which is perfect emptiness/oneness. The emptiness/oneness is a source of limitless energy that has existed since before the beginning of time as we know it. It always has been and always will be. The Tao teaches that when the energy in this emptiness/oneness reaches a certain point, two kinds of energy are created. One is called yin energy. The other is called yang energy. These two kinds of energy are attracted to each other. When these energies meet each other at different times, different speeds, and in different spaces, different kinds of creatures and things will come into being. Everything in the universe was created this way. To appreciate the power of this dynamic one just needs to look at the incredible diversity of species and natural objects in the universe. There are several characteristics of yin and yang: e They are always present in everything in the universe. e They are attracted to each other. e They are opposite of each other. e They cannot exist without each other.e They are always together: within yin energy there is yang energy, and within yang energy there is yin energy. e Incertain circumstances yin can change into yang and vice versa. Nothing in the universe is static—everything is always changing. As things change imbalance between yin and yang is created. The tension between balance and imbalance is where change occurs, and at that place is where the potential for growth lies. Imbalance in any system, including human, is not inherently good or bad. It just is. This is the basic teaching of the Tao. It is important at this level of qigong training that you understand the universe on a deeper level. A central question you must ask is, “Who or what is it that creates these two types of energy—yin and yang—and then causes them to join together at different times, in different spaces, and at different speeds?” In Tao Te Ching teaching, Lao Tzu said that Tao gives birth to One, One gives birth to Two, Two gives birth to Three, and Three gives birth to all things. This teaching is very important and helpful to us in understanding and mastering our meditation and healing practice. Tao is Tao. It has created all life and everything in the universe and the universe itself. Yet it is beyond our ability to comprehend. Tao cannot be described. No matter how deeply philosophical or spiritual an explanation is in trying to describe the Tao, at best it can only describe an aspect of it. Thoughts and words will always give an incomplete explanation. Tao gives birth to One. What is One? One means the emptiness/oneness of the energy in the universe. It is an absence of form or matter but a presence of perfect energy.Similar to Tao, energy is energy, and energy cannot be described. Energy takes many different forms. If something can be described, it is not energy but is a form of energy. Light is one form of energy. Heat is one form of energy. Water is one form of energy. Each person is a form of energy, but energy itself cannot be described. Like Tao, if you don’t believe in energy, it still is. If you do believe in it, it still is. It has nothing to do with us. Albert Einstein made this discovery in the early 20" century: Energy cannot be made nor can it be destroyed. It is the same discovery the early Taoists made thousands of years ago: Energy cannot be made, destroyed, nor described. One gives birth to Two. Two is yin and yang. In the emptiness/oneness of the universe—in that perfect energy—yin and yang come into being. Like the Tao and energy, yin and yang cannot be described directly, but we know them by their characteristics, which were described earlier. Two gives birth to Three. Three is consciousness, which creates all matter in the universe. Consciousness Let’s begin the discussion of consciousness with the traditional yin-yang symbol. The empty circle, as mentioned earlier, is the symbol for One, or emptiness. The yin- yang symbol, which represents Two, is the beginning of form in the universe. Inside the circle the two components come into existence. They are drawn with the dark part representing yin and the bright part representing yang. Inside of each yin and yang, there is a small circle. The circles indicate that within the yin, there is yang, and within the yang there is yin. This also indicates theimportance of the relationship between yin and yang and the importance of the balance between them. Everything in the universe has these two parts— yin and yang—and they are — seen as negative and positive or opposites. (In this reference, negative does not mean something bad, nor positive something good. They are just opposites, like the negative and positive poles of a battery—both are necessary for the battery to provide power.) Yin-yang philosophy has made a great contribution to humankind’s understanding of the universe and has had a great impact on civilization. Chinese leaders and scholars throughout history have used these principles to guide the development of China. Chinese culture, art, politics, engineering, military strategies, and medicine—all have been guided by this philosophy, which has had great influence throughout China’s history and around the world. It is consciousness that makes yin and yang come together at different times, in different spaces, and at different speeds, and makes everything happen. To represent consciousness in SFQ we have added a yellow belt right in the middle of the traditional yin-yang symbol. (The yellow belt is represented by light grey in the drawing to the right.) There is a Universal Consciousness, which like the Tao and emptiness/oneness, cannot be fully named or understood. Each person or object also has her/his or its own con-sciousness that is also part of the Universal Consciousness. It is from the energy of this consciousness that everything happens, and from it everything is possible. Consciousness is the key to bringing the right materials together to make things happen according to the plans you develop. To help you understand this better, we can look at how you use your consciousness as a human to get something done. For example if you want to build a house, a lot of materials are necessary. Depending on the type of house you want to build, you may need wood, hammers, nails, saws and many other things. All the necessary materials are available for you to choose from, but what do you need before making your choice? First of all, you need an idea—a thought and a picture in your mind of what this future house will be like. It all starts with that. Then you draw your plans, get your materials, and go to work to build the house. But you must have the picture first. This picture comes from your consciousness. Because of your consciousness, the rest can take shape. Without this consciousness, nothing will happen. It is the Universal Consciousness that created everything in the universe. It is this force or presence that some people refer to as the Creator or God. We are, all of us, a part of this Consciousness and we are always connected to it through our own consciousness, whether we are aware of this or not. It is an infinite source of wisdom and energy that is always available to each of us. Understanding the importance of consciousness, both yours and the Universal Consciousness, is the key to a higher- level qigong practice. This consciousness then provides us with a very powerful tool to help us master the art ofenergy healing. Your mind is the gateway to your consciousness and to the Universal Consciousness. If you want to help others heal, it starts with the thought that you want to help others heal. Then you need to learn how. You have many choices: you might choose to learn qigong, reiki, or acupuncture, or you might choose to learn many other ways to help others heal; but it all starts with a single thought that comes from your consciousness. There are many different levels of consciousness, and what level you are able to use for energetic healing is dependent on you. The more you are able to focus your mind, enter into the emptiness/oneness, and use your consciousness to connect with the vibration of Universal Consciousness, the higher the level of your healing energy. Universal Consciousness will meet your consciousness at whatever level you have attained. This raises the question of how you can apply this concept in your qigong healing. The answer is simple: you learn how to use your consciousness. Since everything is a product of consciousness, and everything is a form of energy, you can use your consciousness and Universal Consciousness to transform any form of energy. Illness or diseases in the body or mind are simply another form of energy created by your consciousness, whether you are aware of it or not. For example, like all things, a tumor is formed by the two types of energy, yin energy and yang energy. The formation of a tumor begins with yin energy, the energy you cannot see or touch. (Everything starts first with yin energy.) If the yin energy continues to build, as opposed to dissipate, your body will become more and more out of balance. Ultimately yang energy will join the yin energy and may turn into a physical form, a tumor.Of course, no one wants a tumor in his or her body; however, you need to keep in mind that the tumor is merely a physical representation of an ongoing energy imbalance. This imbalance would be the result of a myriad of decisions made such as to eat poorly, to not exercise, and to live a stress-filled life. There may have already been anxiety or depression—possibly alcohol abuse or an eating disorder. Also, all of your emotions and everything you think are more forms of energy, and they affect the balance of energy within your body. So you can see how you may not have chosen to create a tumor, but with your consciousness you made many decisions that contributed to the tumor. Not being aware of decisions you make, nor understanding the implications of those decisions, doesn’t mean you aren’t using your consciousness. You are always using your consciousness whether you are aware of it or not. This is why, even more so at this level of qigong practice, you need to remember that everything you do, say, and think is part of your consciousness and affects your energy. Consciousness is the creative force and is always present when yin and yang energy come together. It doesn’t make judgments about good or bad. It creates based on the energetic imprint we have given it through our thoughts and actions. It creates joy and unhappiness, health or illness depending upon what energy is present. Of course there is always an aspect of what is created that is beyond your ability to comprehend and explain, as the Tao is in everything. But what is important to understand is that you contribute to everything that is created by your body. Sometimes there are other contributing energetic factors that don’t come from your consciousness that can help lead to a tumor, from environmental influences to serious childhood trauma and many others (some of which are addressed in Level Four), but it is important to understand that through our consciousness, whether we know it or not, we all significantly influence our health and well-being.10 Energy healers understand this concept, but many people in the West feel burdened or blamed for their illness when you explain it to them, so often it isn’t helpful to share it. But as healers and qigong practitioners you know that understanding this concept is empowering, because then it means that where you have negatively influenced your life through your consciousness is exactly where you can most powerfully makes changes for the positive with your consciousness. Understanding How to Use Your Consciousness Let us look at what happens when you are diagnosed with a tumor—how your consciousness often creates even more problems. When you are diagnosed with a tumor or some other imbalance, you internally react. That reaction also has an effect. You might become afraid. You might feel angry and victimized. You want to get rid of this tumor very desperately, but feel hopeless. All too often you react with fear, anger, and depression. Then the vibration of the fear, anger, and depression complicate the healing process because they cause more blockages and more damage. As we have already discussed in Level One and Level Two ¢ The vibration of the energy from anger affects the liver e The vibration of fear affects the kidneys, which is the life force energy © The vibration of depression affects the lungs and chestSince the kidneys are the major producers of life- force energy, when the kidney energy is depleted because of chronic fear, your body becomes more vulnerable to stress and then does not have enough energy to help get rid of other energy blockages, which can lead to numerous problems. When depression occurs it affects your lungs and impedes their ability to do their job. Your lungs are responsible for the intake of oxygen, which helps with your life force, digestive system, and the purification of your blood. Not getting enough oxygen from the lungs can affect all of the organs. Thirty percent of the body’s toxins come out through the lung/breathing system! While anger, fear, and depression may be considered normal responses to being diagnosed with a cancerous tumor, you can see how they can also affect your physical health, from your liver to your kidneys and lungs and beyond. You can see how your reactions and consciousness can create more energy blockages at the very time when you want to be healing from blockages. In what some call the “sub-conscious” or the “unconscious,” in the deeper level of your consciousness, you do, in effect, help create these problems. That’s the bad news. Now here’s the good news: you can work on getting rid of the problems you do not want in the same way you contributed to creating them. Since your consciousness helps create these things, you can also use your consciousness—especially a higher level of consciousness—to help remove them. Since they are just energy, you use your consciousness to change the form of the energy. How do you bring about this change—this transfor- mation of energy? To begin with, you just ask for it. 1112 “T want to heal.” “I believe I will be healed.” “All my channels open.” Remember, your thoughts are energy and are a creative force. Of course you also do your qigong active exercises and sitting meditations; but your consciousness affects you all day, so what you do outside of your qigong practice becomes as important as what you do during it. Another way to say it is this: change the way you think, and you change what your consciousness creates. That is the principle. It is just that simple. Here is an important suggestion: learn to be flexible in your life, relax, and take it easy. Getting mad because someone cuts in front of you on the freeway, becoming upset when someone changes their plans and it disrupts your schedule, or judging others because they do not act like you do—all of these actions not only hurt others, but—because we now understand consciousness better—we can see how they also hurt you. When you find yourself in situations like these, your attitude can be changed very easily. The second you see yourself reacting like this, breathe, relax, sink into your heart, and look at these people with love, kindness, and forgiveness. This not only changes how you feel about your life in the moment, but it also creates the overall change you hope for in life, leaving you a more loving and joyful person. Using Your Consciousness to Help Others We all know about the power of prayer in helping people heal. If you think about it, the energy behind prayers often comes from hopes based in emotion. Your friend is sick, you are sad and scared for her and for her family, and you ask your God for help, hoping your God hears your prayer and heals her. You know those prayers have power, but in this level of energyhealing and consciousness, we know how to make prayers that are so much more powerful. By using what you know about yourself, about energy, and about the universe, you don’t make wishes based in emotion; you pray with a belief based in knowledge and experience. You don’t just hope that your God and the universe will do something to help your friend heal; you know and believe it to be fact. You don’t use your fear or emotion to create the prayer either—you use the knowledge you have of the energy of the universe that comes through prayer, be it to your God, your master’s energy, or just universal love. And we know that the minute you focus your mind and energy on the healing process, healing begins. This is using your consciousness to join the Universal Consciousness to help someone heal. Of course, this isn’t something you do that is special to you. You are tapping into the power of the universe, which everyone can do if they apply their consciousness. Here is a good example of how the power of your mind and universal love can work. When you are helping your friend with a heart problem, you send energy to his or her heart by saying, “Heart channels open, completely healed!” You know that the power of your own consciousness has a limit, so you pray and you tap into the infinite source with your consciousness and ask your God’s energy, or your master’s energy, or Universal Consciousness, to join you. You then feel your energy connect with this infinitely more powerful energy source, and through your consciousness you help direct this powerful healing energy to your friend. This feeling, or experiencing, of the connection with Universal Consciousness is very important because it is how you allow your heart and the Infinite Source to get things done according to what you want to best help your friend. 1314 You then don’t just hope the heart will be healed, you see it, you feel it, you sense it, you visualize it, and you use your entire consciousness and know with great confidence that your love and your God’s love will begin immediately to restore the heart to perfect health. It is important to do it this way, because your consciousness is made up of two parts: 1. Your conscious mind, which is the decision maker but has only 10 percent of the energy of the body 2. Your subconscious mind, which we consider to be part of your heart energy. Your subconscious mind is e The builder or maker of what needs to be done, because it has 90 percent of the energy of your body e The connector to the infinite source—it knows where to find the best energy to help you make things done e The advisory board of the system—it finds the best information for you, gives you the best advice, and doesn’t make any judgment on your decision You know the physical healing of your friend’s heart can take time because of the damage that has happened to it, but you also know that emotional and spiritual healing can happen much quicker and start healing immediately. As you work on your friend’s heart you might see tears come to his or her eyes, which is quite common. What you are seeing is a consequence of your consciousness tapping into Universal Consciousness and directing it to your friend, who is experiencing that energy. The tears come to his or her eyes because you are directing universal love to his heart andhelping arouse the awareness and knowledge in his heart of his connection with your God and the universe. You are helping to change the negativity that has been blocking his heart, and you are helping your friend remember that he or she is not alone in the universe—that he or she is loved, loving, and part of universal love. Even if he or she is not aware of this, you are helping his or her heart energy to remember what you know, through your own experience and in your consciousness: we are all part of universal love, and it is in all of our hearts. The emotional and spiritual healing that is taking place with your friend then begins to help the physical healing of his or her heart as well. This is how simple and powerful your mind can be when you know how to use it correctly. In summary: Tao gives birth to One, the emptiness/oneness; One gives birth to Two, yin and yang; Two gives birth to Three, consciousness; and Three gives birth to everything. Three is the consciousness, and through joining our consciousness with Universal Consciousness we can help ourselves and others to heal faster and more completely. The Importance of Your Belief System In our Level One classes people often say they have heard that many masters teach that if you believe qigong works, qigong is going to work. If you don’t believe that qigong works, qigong is not going to work. This is not what we say in Spring Forest Qigong. We say this: If you believe that it works, it works. If you don’t believe that it works, it still works! When you believe it, though, it works better and faster; but if you don’t believe it, that’s fine. It will still work, because the energy is still there whether you believe in it or not. 1516 When you do believe that your energetic vibration can merge with a higher level of vibration of Universal Consciousness, your connection to this consciousness and its impact in your life increase significantly. As your confidence and belief grow, you will move closer toward the vibration of the pure love of your God, the Buddha, the universe, or unconditional love, which will cause your energies to vibrate in concert. The powerful Universal Consciousness will magnify, purify, and correct the energetic imbalance in your body and help you heal much more quickly. So you can see why your belief system becomes so important when helping yourself and others heal. Frequently we also hear this comment: “My energy is not ready for me to become a healer. I want to help myself heal first before I learn how to heal others.” There is nothing wrong with this idea. There are certainly people for whom this is true. But there is something you might want to keep in mind about this energy. If you feel deep in your heart that you truly want to help others heal—if you feel generous and loving toward others—then regardless of your own need for healing, you can do so much to help them heal. This also helps you heal much more quickly! The Difference Between Spirit and Soul Now we come to the Taoist understanding of spirit and soul. Many people put spirit and soul together and consider them the same thing; but in Chinese thinking, they are not the same thing. The soul is always pure. A person’s soul is always good and always beautiful and cannot be affected by what happens in this lifetime. It also cannot be seen, because it is part of the highest level of energy vibration and Universal Consciousness. These qualities are not true of the spirit. The spirit can be affected by our life experiences. There are two aspects to each person’s spirit, according to Taoist philosophy.One is yin spirit. The other is yang spirit. The yin spirit stays in the liver. The yang spirit stays in the heart. In your dreams or in your meditation you might sometimes see your physical body very clearly: your nose, eyes, neck, and hair. That is your yang spirit. When you just see the frame of yourself—your outline—but don’t see clearly your fingers, your nose, etc., that is your yin spirit. Your spirit can be negatively affected by your life. It might end up carrying emotions, such as anger, fear, or whatever else you stay attached to from your life experiences. It also can be affected by the messages you experience and keep in your mind. A troubled or out-of-balance spirit can cause major problems because very often when you want to make a decision you tap into the spirit first before you get to the soul. Your soul is hidden deeper than your spirit. So if you have a troubled spirit, you will get poor guidance from it. When the spirit and the soul vibrate with the same frequency, that is where you will get the best guidance possible. Many people know this as their inner voice or inner knowing. Through doing qigong and practicing meditation, helping others, and having positive thoughts, you can help to purify your spirit. Then you are able to get the messages from your soul more directly and they will help guide your way in life so that you make fewer mistakes and have more joy. The other amazing thing that happens when you practice qigong, do good things for others from the love in your heart, and seek to merge your consciousness with Universal Consciousness, is that it can dramatically change how you experience life. For example, when love flows freely through you it is so much easier not only to make right decisions, but to respond to a crisis, and to act with love and kindness in 1718 any situation. A great ease and an enjoyment of life become common. This is because when your spirit is purified, you are more able to let your soul guide your entire life. Why does this happen? It happens because when your energy vibrates more in harmony with the pure energy of your soul and moves you closer to the energy of the Universal Consciousness and unconditional love, you begin to live at a higher level of consciousness and everything you do comes from that level of energy vibration. You will feel more peaceful and will bring more peace to the world. This can also dramatically change what you do in this life. We all have the capacity to tap into our Buddha nature, to act Christ-like, to act in accordance with Mohammed’s teachings, or to walk with pure consciousness of the truth about life, with unconditional love for all. Once we begin to harmonize our spirit and soul it will help us live more in accordance with what is possible. While you might start out your adult life as a teacher, but feel that you should be doing something different, you could end up a plumber, doctor, minister, or whatever. Or you might end up an enlightened teacher bringing peace wherever you go! You don’t need to become Buddha to be Buddha-like. Just open your heart to the universe—to anyone—right where you are. The Chinese would say that when you live at this level of consciousness, it will move you up to another circle of life, or a better orbit of life. In the West we would say that it helps us to come closer to our highest potential in this life. As your energy and the higher level of universal energy begin to vibrate in closer harmony, that is when you will get a higher level of consciousness and your circle or orbit of life can change. It helps you clear your karmas. You will have better health, you will do betterat work and in all aspects of your life, and you will do better especially in helping others heal. To help manifest this change in this circle of your life and to help you become more of who you are meant to be, it is important to purify your spirit. You do this by doing more good things for people, for your community, and for the planet. Think good thoughts. Let your consciousness and the Universal Consciousness vibrate more and more in harmony, and your spirit will help you know what your soul is guiding you to do. You will then experience how this not just improves your life, but can change it in many wonderful ways. The Emptiness/Oneness You learned in Levels One and Two that going into the emptiness/oneness is very important. Now, in Level Three, it becomes even more important. The deeper you go into the emptiness/oneness, the more it helps your third eye to open; the more your third eye opens; and the deeper into the emptiness/oneness you can go. Then once you get deep (enough) into the emptiness/oneness, you come to a stage where you forget yourself—you forget your needs and desires and all your worries, and the only thing you want to achieve is nothing, except being in the oneness. When you reach the level where you can get into the emptiness/oneness instantly anytime you want, and can stay in the emptiness/oneness for as long as you want, then you are going to achieve everything. You seek nothing but achieve everything. When you understand the Tao, you understand that the emptiness/oneness is the source of all the energy forms in the universe. When you get deep into the emptiness/oneness and combine your energy with the unconditional love energy of the universe, you dramatically increase your healing energy and your ability to help 1920 others. The emptiness/oneness is everything and everything is in the emptiness/oneness. Everything comes from the emptiness/oneness and everything returns to the emptiness/oneness. It is an oversimplification, but the emptiness/oneness is the purest state of energy. In the emptiness/oneness there is no conflict, no stress, no anger. These are all things we have created for our- selves in this world. When we go into the emptiness/oneness, we are ridding ourselves of those things. They do not exist in the emptiness/oneness. In the emptiness/oneness we totally renew our energy and our entire being. People often find it difficult to go into the emptiness/oneness because they make it difficult. They believe it must be difficult, and that is exactly what it becomes. We have been taught that we must work hard to accomplish big changes in our life, so we think we must work hard to try to go into the emptiness/oneness. But you don’t get into the emptiness/oneness by working hard, and when it doesn’t happen, you create or add to your doubt, worry, frustration, and stress. Going into the emptiness/oneness is as simple as going to sleep. In Level One you learn that sleeping is natural meditation—a natural type of qigong in which most of the energy blockages a person creates during the day are balanced. Do you remember how you fall asleep? First, you feel very tired. You don’t have energy to think about anything anymore, good or bad. You let your body sink into the bed and completely relax, and then you fall asleep. The deeper you are in sleep, the faster you can balance your energy and the more refreshed you feel when you wake up. This is our natural meditation. You can also use this simple and natural way of balancing your energy when you do your qigongmeditation, helping you with the physical and mental energy imbalances that aren’t restored in your sleep. You follow the same process you use to fall asleep to do your meditation and go deep into the emptiness/oneness. First, you must let go of doubt, worry, frustration, and stress. You must empty your mind of these things. Let go of your emotions. Let go of your ego. Let go of yourself. Totally let go. Whenever an undesired image or a negative picture appears in your meditation, stop it right away and don’t follow it. Those things do not exist in the emptiness/oneness. They are a distraction and you cannot take them into the emptiness/oneness with you. You must let go of them. The faster you can quiet your mind in your meditation, the more quickly and deeply you can go into the emptiness/oneness. And just like in your sleep, the deeper you go into the emptiness/oneness, the more powerful the healing and restoring of the energy imbalances and the more energized and refreshed you feel when you come out of it. Pure meditation—going deeper and deeper into the emptiness/oneness—is the most powerful form of meditation. It is how to increase your spiritual energy by raising the level of the vibration of your energy. You don’t bring images with you and don’t respond to images or thoughts that come to you. You attach to nothing. Again, these things do not exist in the emptiness/oneness. They only keep you from going deeper into your meditation. However, there is an exception to this. The only time you want images or pictures or messages to come to you during meditation is when you are seeking an answer to an important question. When you meditate on a question, seeking an answer, the purpose of your meditation is different. You meditate to quiet your mind so that you are completely relaxed and open and can receive the answer to your question without interference or outside distractions. This is a different type of meditation. It is 21also valuable and important, but it is not the way to go deeper into the emptiness/oneness. Behaviors and Techniques That Help with Deep Meditation There are two behaviors that you can practice that will help you significantly when you sit down to do your meditation. First, do good things for other people unconditionally. When you do good things for others without expecting something in return, the vibration of your energy changes and moves you closer to the vibration of the Unconditional Love. Also, you feel happier. This helps you to relax and helps get you into deeper meditation more quickly. Another benefit of doing good things for others is that all of the people you help will be grateful to you and say thanks to you in their hearts. Their thanks and gratitude send you an energy that will help put you in a very peaceful, spiritual environment for your meditation. If you do negative things to others, the opposite will happen to you of course. This is another reason why as a qigong practitioner it is important to remember to do good things for others without asking anything in return. The second thing you can do to help you prepare for deep meditation is to fast. The benefits of fasting are tremendous. Fasting helps your body to run smoothly, quietly, and efficiently, and helps quiet the mind. We will discuss this in much more detail a little later. Once you sit down to meditate, here are some steps you can take that will help you to get into the emptiness/oneness: 1. With your heart, put a smile on your face. This immediately begins to open your heart energy and releases endorphins, which help you relaxand begin to merge with the emptiness/oneness. Relax your shoulders and your entire body. This helps to open up the channels in your body so you are less distracted by physical sensations. . Say the password and go into the emptiness/oneness. Having done this so many times already, your body and consciousness will begin to feel the merging with the emptiness/oneness. . Call on your master or your God. It is very important at this level that when your master or your God comes to you, you merge with his or her energy. When you visualize your master standing in front of you, see and sense his or her happiness to be with you. Use your consciousness to feel his or her love for you and happiness in helping you merge your energies together with the unconditional love of the universe. Then you see your bodies merge. See it and sense it with your consciousness. . To start your meditation, focus on one image— maybe your lower dantian or, probably even better, your heart. Notice and feel the energy as you are doing this. This is very important. If you can feel what you are experiencing, you shift your conscious mind to your subconscious mind, the builder of your plant. You allow your miracle builder to do its work. It is even better if you can visualize a bright light—a candle flame, the early morning summer sun, a flower, whatever, in either of these dantians. When you get into deep meditation, you let this image go.24 5. If your mind drifts away and engages with images and thoughts, gently pull it back - without judgment - focus it again, and let everything go. When you get to this state, don’t focus on anything anymore. Try not to feel your physical body anymore. The only thing you want to feel is a concept of yourself. Stay in the emptiness/oneness for whatever length of time you are meditating. When you come out from the emptiness/oneness, bring your focus to your lower dantian by seeing a light there. Visualize the light spinning clockwise, and see it change into an energy pill and hide deep in behind the navel. There is one other technique that you can use that is also very powerful. After you merge with your master and have visualized the light in your heart, you can quietly chant, “Om...mwah...” or the Six-Word Chant as you go into the emptiness/oneness. Keep focused on the light and keep chanting until you lose all awareness of both the light and the chanting. This can also help you go deep into your meditation as the words of the chant slowly fade and you find yourself in the emptiness/oneness. Doing meditations this way is also very powerful and beneficial for several other reasons: e You merge yourself with your master or with your God. Once you see yourself united together with your master or your God, surrender yourself completely and let yourself be an empty vessel. Once there, you will experience no ego, no temptations, no grasping, and no attachment to this material world. This makes it easier to allow the energy of your master or your God to purify your energy and to let his/her energy guide your energy. In this way your energy and his/her energyvibrate together so that you can really do as he/she asks you to do. e You focus inside yourself instead of outside. You do this because you want to strengthen your energy centers inside, keep your internal energy channels open, and open up more energy channels. We use or borrow universal energy (as we do in Sun and Moon meditations) so that gradually our internal energy will vibrate together with the universal energy in a higher level. ¢ Using your third eye to see a light in your lower dantian or middle dantian helps train your third eye and strengthens these energy centers. By focusing the light on the lower and middle dantian, you greatly strengthen these centers of vital and healing energy so that you can help heal yourself and others more quickly and completely. Also once your energy is strong enough and purified enough, you might be able to develop supernatural power. All these techniques can help you let go of your stress and emotions and bring your body to a deeper state of relaxation. Your mind will become very clear. Everything is so peaceful and beautiful. When this happens, you will know you are going into the emptiness/oneness. The more you can let go of all material things, the deeper you can go into the emptiness/oneness. The deeper you go into the emptiness/oneness, the easier it is to let go of all these things. If you can do this, then later on in your healing you can put yourself and the person you are working with together into the emptiness/oneness to heal. Then healing happens much faster and more completely.26 Third Eye Training Opening up you third eye greatly increases your spiritual energy and your ability to help yourself and others heal. To open your third eye you need to learn how to focus your attention, which consequently deepens your meditation and allows you to go further into the emptiness/oneness. This then helps to purify and strengthen your spiritual energy and give you many more healing tools. Opening Your Third Eye In Spring Forest Qigong Level Three, along with using Universal Consciousness you learn to borrow and use energy from the sun and moon through visualizations. Along with increasing your energy and helping you heal, this helps you focus your mind on one object, which is an important technique to help open and develop your third eye. How quickly your third eye will open depends a great deal on how effectively you can bring your focus to just one object in your meditation and how long you can hold that focus. You can only do this through meditation and in this level you will need to do many more long meditations. There are two main meditations that we will use: the Sun Meditation and the Moon Meditation. These are guided meditations on CDs but you can also learn them from this manual. As you already know, every form of energy has two parts: yin and yang. The moon is associated with yin energy and the sun with yang energy. As you also know, yin and yang must be in good balance to stay healthy, so at different times you will want to use one of these meditations more than the other for the reasons listed below.The Moon Meditation (yin energy) helps soothe the energy in the body, opens up more energy centers, and helps develop spiritual energy. The Sun Meditation (yang energy) helps strengthen the body’s physical energy and the energy in the centers that are opened through the Moon Meditation and other sitting meditations. The Sun and Moon meditations are performed in the following way (The time sequence below is assuming a one-hour meditation. You can do these meditations in a shorter or longer amount of time if you wish.): To start, focus on your lower dantian, seeing a light shining deep in behind the navel. Then slowly move the light up along the central line in the front of the body, stopping shortly in the middle dantian, then the throat area, and then bring it to the third eye position. Now you call upon your master’s energy. It seems that you see your master or your God coming toward you from far, far away in the vast reaches of the universe until he or she is standing right in front of you with a smile on his or her face. Ask your master or your God, with great respect, to please help open your third eye so that you can better help yourself and others to heal. See your master or your God raise his or her hand and point his or her Sword Fingers at your third eye. Then see beams of energy coming out of his or her fingers and charging soothing and powerful energy into your third eye. This lasts about five minutes. Be very relaxed with a smile on your face while your master or your God is charging energy into your third eye. This way you can prevent over-focus, which might cause a headache or discomfort in the head. 2728 Invite your master or your God to sit behind you or merge with you, continuing to help you with the rest of the meditation. Now use your third eye to see far, far away into the vast reaches of the universe and visualize that you see a morning sun or full moon (depending on the meditation) rising there. In your mind invite the sun or moon as your dear friend to come to help your with meditation, and see the sun or moon coming across the universe and stopping right in front of you. Visualize the sun or moon shrinking to the size of a very small ball and then entering the top of your head and moving down into your third eye position. The sun or moon stays at the third eye position for about five minutes as you visualize and sense your entire head being lit up by its light. Guide the sun or moon down into the throat area. If you are doing the Moon Meditation, the moon stays here for about ten minutes. If it is the Sun Meditation, then the sun stays for only five minutes. Then you move the sun or moon down to your middle dantian or your heart area. If you are doing the Sun Meditation, the sun stays here for ten minutes. If it is the Moon Meditation, the moon stays here for only five minutes. Envision the sun or moon moving to your lower dantian position, where it remains for about five minutes or so. Move the sun or moon back up to your heart position for about five minutes. Move the sun or moon up into the throat area for about five minutes. Move the sun or moon up to your third eye position. Then, after another five minutes, visualize the sun or moon coming out from your forehead and returning to regular size right in front of you.e In your mind, say, “thank you” with sincere gratitude to the sun or moon for helping you open your third eye and ask it to come again the next time you call upon it to help with your meditation. Then visualize it returning to the end of the universe. e Now visualize a bright, beautiful, small ball of energy in your third eye. Slowly move it down your front channel to your lower dantian. Visualize the light spinning clockwise. e You can stay here for as long as you like, but don’t focus on anything. When you are ready to end your meditation, visualize the ball spinning brighter and smaller until it stops when it is the size of an energy pill. Then tuck it in deep in behind your navel. e Say thank you to your master for helping you with your meditation. With great appreciation, ask your master or your God to come back to help you again the next time you call upon his or her energy. e Now see your master or your God going back to the end of the universe. Another good meditation you can do is this: After you have had your master put energy into your third eye for about five minutes, move your focus down to your middle dantian and leave it there. (Don’t focus on your third eye overly long. It isn’t necessary and leaves your physical body out of balance.) If you have high blood pressure, fever, or headaches, it is better to focus the energy on your third eye for a shorter amount of time and then move your focus down to the lower dantian. People who don’t have a lot of physical energy for whatever reason would also be better off focusing on the lower dantian. The lower dantian is the life force which helps strengthen the foundation. (See section below on building a strong foundation.) 2930 When Your Third Eye Opens Once your third eye opens, your confidence level is going to greatly increase and you will be able to use the tech- niques you learned in Level One and Level Two even more effectively. You will be more able to hear the guidance from the universe and you will be able to go into your heart and consciousness to find answers to your questions whenever they arise. Different Levels of Third-Eye Opening The first thing that usually happens is that you notice how your sixth sense, or intuition, has increased. You just know things—you feel things you didn’t know before. For instance, when you pick up the phone you know exactly who is calling you. Or you have a sense that a family member or friend is in need, and you call them and find they are struggling with something and you can help. As your sixth sense develops, you also learn to trust it. 1. While in meditation in the next level, you can see a hole going into the emptiness. Then you see stars and you see yourself. (If you see clouds, that is not it. When you see clouds it means you are collecting energy in your third eye. It is not open yet.) Once you start to see the hole—or sometimes a big eye staring at you—that is an indicator that your third eye is ready to open up. When this happens it is important to increase your meditation time and to trust yourself and the messages you get from the universe even more. 2. In the next level you are able to see certain parts of your own body or another person’s body. You can see all the organs: the liver, the heart, the lungs, etc. This will happen first in your meditation. Then once you are able to maintain a deep focus out of your meditation, this can happenwhen you choose, at times such as when you are working on someone with qigong healing. . When you advance even more you’re able to see the colors inside the body. You might not see the actual organs, but in the location of the organs you might be able to see the colors: In the liver you will see a faint green In the pancreas, a yellow In the lungs you will see a white In the kidneys it will be blue In the heart, a soft red or pink .. Next some are able to see the bone structure, the skeleton of the body, the joints, or how the bones meet. . In the next level you can see the veins and arteries in the body. . Next you are able to see the muscles—all the pieces of the muscles and how they are laid out. . Next you see all these things in colors, just like acolor TV. At the very beginning you might see just in black and white, and then gradually you see in colors. That means your energy is really developed. . At the highest level you are able to see the skin—the entire surface of the body. With your eyes closed you can see your own skin and your friend’s skin and all the information that is carried. The surface of the body is generally the most difficult area to see. That’s because the energy on the surface of the body carries messages about the person’s sexuality and his or her life history and morality. The universe 3132 won’t open that much information unless you know what to do with it. Obviously the level in which you are able to open your third eye depends on the level of purification of your energy. The more purified your energy, the more you will see with your third eye. Of course there are many other ways your third eye might open up, but the levels listed above are very common in Taoist third-eye training. So look for these things to happen to you, but be open to anything the universe offers as you work on opening your third eye. Once your third eye opens and you learn to trust more, then you will be able to know many more things on a spiritual level. Sometimes you will be able to predict events in the future, and you will know them with great certainty. You will be able to see how you are part of the Tao and at the same time see that you are nothing important in the grand scheme of the universe. This brings about a profound humility and great peace. You can even come to a place at a very advanced level where you can see your past and future lives. Past and future lives are a Taoist and Buddhist belief, so this doesn’t apply and isn’t important to those who don’t believe this way. When children are young, many of them have their third eye open. When little children who are two, three, four, or five years old point up to the sky or are looking in the woods and say, “Hey, mommy, you see the group of angels walking over there?” That is not their imagination. Children can really see things like that. As children get older, and especially when the sexual energy gets activated during puberty, the third eye startsclosing. Through meditation, and with prayers and fasting, you can open your third eye up again. Building a Strong Foundation You will need to do longer meditations to open your third eye, so it is very important to build up your physical energy before you try to go too far into the deeper and more spiritual meditations. This is why it is so important to practice your Level One and Two active exercises. They not only help you bring balance and healing into your life, but also lay the ground work for Level Three. Think of them as constructing a building—a building that is sturdy and will last a long time and be able to weather any condition that needs a strong foundation. If you focus on your third eye, you are focusing on the top of the building. Too much at the top without a strong foundation at the bottom and the building will not stand for long. It’s the same with your energy. If you don’t have a strong foundation and focus a lot on opening your third eye, you will eventually come to the point where you don’t have enough energy in your body and you will feel depleted. Then you will have to start over and focus primarily on Level One exercises because you have to build up the foundation again. This is also why, at the end of each meditation, you focus your energy back in the lower dantian. No matter how advanced you are, you need to continually fortify the foundation. 33Fasting Fasting is a simple and powerful method to help you refine and purify your energy. It helps the body energy run smoother and helps the mind to focus, making it possible to go quickly and deeply into the emptiness/oneness. Then it becomes easier to open your third eye. Fasting has many wonderful effects on your energy. When your body realizes it is not receiving energy from food, it has a couple of responses it does instinctively for self- preservation. One is that it begins to run more effectively with the energy it has. The other is that its consciousness becomes more internal and more protective: your body is on full alert and Tunning at maximum efficiency. Because this type of fasting is very controlled and not dangerous, you can use these innate responses to fasting for the benefit of meditation. In Level Three it is important to refine the attention and energy you give your physical energetic system so that it takes less energy for you to meet its needs and it gives more and better energy back to you to use in meditation. When you control your mind and the needs and urges of your body, you can then focus your attention and energy to help you with your spiritual energy. This will help you deepen your consciousness and you will become much better at helping yourself and others heal. Let us begin by naming some of the benefits of fasting: e As you turn your attention away from focusing on food, and when your body isn’t busy processing food, your mind is clearer and your thoughts flow more peacefully.¢ When your body isn’t constantly processing food it gets a chance to detox, which helps it to heal faster. e Because you have more energy to bring to meditation, you can focus better and get into the emptiness/oneness faster and stay in the emptiness/oneness longer. The longer you are in the emptiness/oneness, the better it is. ¢ It fosters a better connection with your God or the Unconditional Love. ¢ All of this leads to an increase in energy and confidence and consequently helps you to open your third eye. While many people approach fasting with a lot of anxiety, it doesn’t have to be a difficult process. There are two simple little tips that make the transition of going into the fast and coming out of the fast much easier. It is best to eat light—half as much as you normally do—the day before you start your meditation; otherwise your body may go through a harsh adjustment when you take food away. It is also best when coming off your fast that when you start to eat again, you just eat a little bit and then a while later eat a little bit more. Of course eat very healthy foods. Otherwise your body may go through a harsh adjustment as you fill it too quickly with food it has to process. The more you fast the easier this all becomes because your body doesn’t feel that the lack of food is a serious deprivation. It will enjoy the feeling of the purified energy. Your relationship to food often improves because your body will be much more sensitive to what it wants you to put into it. 3536 Fasting Story Michael Santos, Santa Barbara, California Certified Spring Forest Qigong Level One Instructor, I was fasting prior to a three-hour meditation and was hoping that it would help deepen my meditation like I was told it would. That meditation was by far the deepest experience I could ever have imagined. I felt like I could have stayed in the meditation for several more hours. The fasting had quieted my body to such a great extent that it seemed like I didn’t have a body, and I could then focus so much better on going into the emptiness/oneness of the universe. I went so much more deeply into the meditation and stayed in that deep place for such a long time and found just pure joy and possibility. It was a very heavenly experience. How to Fast You can start fasting by using fruit—especially apples. The first step is to set up a goal. For example, you decide you are going to fast two times a month and each time you will fast for one day. Once you set up the goal that you are going to fast for one day, then you fast only one day. If after one day you say, “Oh, I feel great. I think I will fast for another day,” that is not good for you. Your body has adjusted to what your mind told it—that you are going to fast for one day. If you change your mind at this point, your body will feel confused and will have a harder time readjusting to the second day. The next time you say you are going to fast, it will not trust what you are telling it. So it is very important that if you decide to fast only one day, then you fast only one day. On a one-day apple fast you have one apple for breakfast, one apple for lunch, and one apple for dinner.Two-Day Fast When a one-day fast is easy for you, then you may want to increase your fast to two consecutive days. On a two- day fast, the first day you eat three apples and the second day you have two apples—one for lunch and another for dinner. Three-Day Fast When you are comfortable with a two-day fast, you may want to go to three days. The first day you eat three apples, the second day two apples, and the third day one apple, which you eat at lunch. When you get better at fasting with apples, you can go with smaller foods like dates—especially Chinese dates, which are as big as a thumb: three dates for the first day, two dates for the second day, and just one date for the third day, just like apples. If you do fine with dates, then you can go with pine nuts. That’s what Taoist mediators eat when they fast: three pine nuts the first day, two pine nuts the second day, and one pine nut the third day. At this level it is important to use your mind to help you with the fast. Visualize the pine nut being very big and containing wonderful nutrients and energy. Take very small bites and imagine them being big bites and that each and every bite is filled with abundant energy and everything your body needs for perfect health. Chew slowly and enjoy everything to its fullest. You will be amazed at how your body will feel no hunger and how it will be energized. When you are comfortable with that, you fast three days in a row with no food—just some water. You don’t want to try and fill yourself up with water, but drink slowly and often—maybe six to eight glasses of water a day depending on your body. 37It is also possible to fast without water, but at this stage we recommend you drink water when you fast. If you come to a point where you do want to do a total fast of all food and water, you need to do that with the guidance of someone who has experienced this type of fast and can supervise you. In Level Three we focus on fasting for the energetic and spiritual benefit, especially in helping open the third eye. But the benefits to the physical and material level are also tremendous. When you have been fasting, even for a short time, you will feel how profoundly it affects your everyday energy. You will certainly notice how much more smoothly the energy in your body flows while fasting, but even outside of your fasting your body’s energy will run more smoothly. This will happen, in part, because you will become more conscious of what you eat and its impact on you— especially large meals or foods your body doesn’t like. More subtly on the physical level, your body benefits because your liver gets a chance to rest, and your entire body gets a chance to reset in response to the smooth energy flow that is uninterrupted by the need to process the normal intake of food. Swallowing Energy There is a technique you can practice to help you maintain your energy level while you are fasting. You don’t want to have to stop your daily, so if during the day you come to a point where you feel you need energy, this is what you can do: e¢ Open your mouth and visualize very powerful universal energy swirling down and coming into your mouth. Close your mouth.*@ Make a noise in your mouth like you are swishing water around. Then as you swallow make a loud swallowing sound with your throat and visualize the energy going down to your stomach. In Western cultures people don’t like to make any noise when eating. But in doing this meditation technique, the sound is important. If you don’t make that noise the energy goes to the lungs instead of the stomach. When you do make the swallowing noise, you force the energy into your stomach. Whenever you feel hungry you can do this technique several times and you will feel energized. 3940 Long-Distance Healing You will learn how simple it is to help your family and friends heal from any distance, be it across the street from you or on the other side of the world, simply by using the techniques you already know. As you learn how powerful your mind is when combined with faith, your confidence will grow and you will feel able to send healing love energy to anyone at anytime, anywhere in the world. Understanding Long-Distance Detecting In Level Two you learned how to detect blockages face- to-face. Now, in Level Three, you will learn how you can extend the use of this technique. When you first learn about long-distance detecting, what you learn might be contrary to your way of thinking, and doubt or disbelief might put limits on your faith and confidence. It can be helpful to start simply, with small steps, and then build upon them as your confidence and experience grow. How you do that is very simple. When you do detecting face-to-face you are taught it is best to detect with your hands about a foot to 18 inches away from the body; but some people like to do it closer and others further away depending on their comfort level. Whether you put your hands a few inches or a few feet away from the person’s body while detecting blockages, we know it doesn’t really make any difference. You have asked your friend’s body to send your hand the message of where his or her blockages are, and you have asked the universe and your master to help you pick up those messages. This works because, as you learned in Level Two, Spring Forest Qigong is message healing. You send messages and receive messages through the energy. So whether you’re one foot or five feet away, whether you are one mile or five miles away, it makes nodifference because you give and get messages through the energy. A simple way to practice long-distance detecting is to practice detecting from one foot away, then 10 feet, and then in the next room. This will help you build your confidence and help you see that it is all about the messages you pick up and send. Once you understand that distance doesn’t matter, at this level you are able to help people heal just by knowing where they are. If you want to help a friend in Italy with a heart problem and you are in America, you do not need to know which direction Italy is nor if the person is lying or sitting down. You don’t need to know any of those specifics. This is so because everything is energy, of course. Remember the password: “I am in the universe. The universe is in my body. The universe and I combine together.” That’s it. You are in the universe, so is your friend in Italy, and the universe is in both of you. So because you both are in the universe and the universe is all energy, it doesn’t matter how close you are to each other. The only thing that matters is whether you can tap into the emptiness/oneness of the universe and access the information. No matter where you go, you are in the universe and you are a part of everything. Because we understand the Tao we know that everything is part of everything else in the universe and therefore has all the information of everything else in the universe. Whatever you detect contains the information you want to know. So now in your mind you say, “Wow, I am in the universe and I am part of everything in the universe.” If you can detect a blockage from a few inches away and then move a few feet away or change your position, and still find the blockage, it tells you that you have access to all the 41information you need to know. Always. No matter where you are, In the Bible Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within.” He didn’t say it is out there someplace or that there is anywhere you have to go to find it. It is in you. The whole kingdom. Everything. Buddha said the same thing: “There is no place you have to go to find the Buddha (the truth); it is within every one of us.” Jesus also said, “My body is your body.” If we use our understanding of energy, we know he didn’t mean his physical body is our physical body. He was talking about the fact that the energy in his body is also in all of us. His energy, his spirit, his soul, his unconditional love, is in all of us, and his perception of life is also. So we begin to see that Jesus, Buddha and Lao Tzu were all trying to help us understand some basic truths about the universe and our capacity to engage with this universal energy. They may say it in slightly different ways and in different languages, but the message is the same. Learning to tap into the universal energy to access information is something you have been doing since Level One. Learning to pick up the vibration of energy blockages was a first step in helping others heal. Now with these advanced techniques you are learning more about spiritual energy and its vibration—how to tap into it and how to transmit it. The more experience and confidence you have with this spiritual energy, the more you will know and trust that you have the ability to help people heal anywhere they are in the world, anytime you want to.Intuition Story: Finding a Lost Object Ann Cathcart, Chanhassen, Minnesota Certified Spring Forest Qigong Level One Instructor My two girlfriends and I were ready to check out of our hotel in Santa Barbara where we had attended a weekend conference. One of my roommates was missing her $500 prescription sunglasses. We scoured the room and the car and called the hotel front desk and the restaurant where we had eaten the night before. No sunglasses, and she needed them—it was a very sunny California morning. The car was packed and we had to get going. Before we got on the freeway the driver pulled over so we could ritually set the intention for manifestation of the special sunglasses. We all believed that nothing is lost in spirit. As soon as we went into the silence, I said the password to myself and could feel my third eye and heart align with the universe. Immediately I heard, “ft’s in the back right corner of the suitcase.” I had never heard such a loud, clear, and emphatic message before. I do believe in my detecting and healing capabilities yet still sometimes doubt, so I thought to myself, “I better double-check this so I don’t make a fool of myself.” I then hand-scanned the suitcase in my mind’s eye and sure enough the glasses were right there. My friends were still silent and I just blurted out, “It’s in the back right corner of the suitcase!” I felt so confident, but deep down I still had doubt that I had the ability to see, feel, and know this. The suitcase was right next to my friend in the back seat. She insisted that she had checked her suitcase twice, to no avail. “What is there to lose? Just check again,” I said. “They’re not here...oh, this is the left side,” she grumbled. With one reach into the right back corner, 43she pulled out her lost sunglasses. We were all dumbstruck. I had never received such a clear message. I was the proud hero for the day and will never doubt my sixth sense again. Techniques for Long-Distance Detecting Visualization Techniques When you do long-distance detecting, as you scan for the blockages you can either invite your friend to be right in front of you or you visualize your hands extending to wherever your friend is. Whether your friend is down the street or in Antarctica, it doesn’t matter. All you need to focus on is that you are picking up a message, just information from scanning his or her body. Don’t focus on the distance or how strange and incredible it is. Treat it as if it is normal. Then scan your friend’s body for blockages exactly as you would if you were face-to-face with your friend. Body Techniques Another method for detecting is to use your own body. You simply say, “My body is my body. Your body is your body.” Then visualize your friend’s body merged together with your body and put the message in your mind that your body is now examining your friend’s body and detecting messages about where the blockages are. You only need to scan your body one time, and you do this with your mind, not your hand. Start from your head going down to your feet. Any part of your body where you feel a vibration reflects some blockage in your friend’s body. You will experience sympathetic symptoms, and this information is the information you are looking for. Some people get concerned and wonder if their own blockages will get in the way of accurately picking up the other person’s blockages. It is a good question but the answer is no, they will not. Once you say in yourmind that your body wants to examine another’s body in your body, your symptoms shift to the background or disappear. (That’s another thing about this energy technique that is valuable. By detecting others in this way and helping them, you might be able to heal yourself at the same time.) After your detecting is complete you just say, “My body is my body, your body is your body. Thank you so much.” And then your friend’s body leaves your body. Body detecting is a great gift, but it requires more confidence. If you don’t have that much confidence, don’t use this technique. Without confi- dence you might doubt what you feel in your body. Once you rid yourself of that doubt then this tech- nique will work better. For those who have fear of picking up the messages of sickness from other people, please do not use this technique. Your fear can create blockages for you. Long Distance Detecting Story Lynn Bachrach, Villanova, Pennsylvania Certified Spring Forest Qigong Level One Instructor Well over a year ago, just after I had first taken the Level Three class, I talked with my sister who lives in Israel one evening. She said she was feeling run down and had been fighting getting a cold again—that her throat was sore and she was feeling all “achy pain-y,” and that for a couple of weeks she had just been feeling worse every day. At this time my sister wasn’t aware that I was practicing qigong. After we talked, I went for a walk and detected blockages by merging my body with her body and did a healing as if my sister were in front of me while I was walking. The next morning I e-mailed my sister and received an enthusiastic e-mail. She mentioned that she woke up feeling re-invigorated about life, and46 that she just felt great, with absolutely no mention whatsoever of how she had been feeling the night before. Later, when I told her about the remote healing, she attributed it to a coincidence—“Lots of things happen like this”—and didn’t believe that there was any association between the remote healing and her physical and emotional shift. So I guess, as Master Lin says, whether or not you believe it (or even know about it!), it works. Techniques for Long-Distance Healing Standard Healing Long-distance healing is done the same way you learned to do healing face-to-face in Levels One and Two. The only actual difference is that the person you are working on is not in the room with you. You put energy into the lower dantian and run the Small Universe on them before and after you work on them, just like you do in person. You use Sword Fingers to break up the blockage, you pull the blockage out and put energy back in. Everything is the same except they aren’t physically sitting in front of you. It is that simple. Long-Distance Healing Story Bob Veitech, Minneapolis, Minnesota Spring Forest Qigong student My son is an alcoholic. He comes by the disease naturally. It runs in my family. My father and mother both fought it, as did I and most of my siblings. Somehow each of us managed to find a path to sobriety. But my youngest son, who is thirty-five, strong, good looking, and intelligent, seemed hell-bent on destroying himself and those around him and rejected any attempt we made to get him to stop. In July of this year he was well on his way to losing his job and his marriage was in serious jeopardy.In late June I developed a classic knee cartilage problem. By July I was limping around, the knee swollen and a source of constant pain. I sought out Chunyi Lin and Spring Forest Qigong on the advice of a friend. Chunyi and another master healer healed the knee in my first visit, but I came back for two or three more sessions. In between visits I read Chunyi’s autobiography, Born A Healer. One of the case histories in the book is the story of a Korean man who was an alcoholic and found that just by being connected to Spring Forest Qigong he was cured. I wanted that for my son. On one of my visits I told my son’s story to one of the master healers and asked what could be done. There was no way my son would consent to a voluntary healing. She told me that Chunyi did do remote healings, but she said it would be better if I did it. I was the person with the love connection. I protested that I knew nothing about healing, but she wouldn’t let me off the hook. She wrote out a simple procedure: opening the liver, removing the blockages, and putting healing energy back into the liver. She told me to visualize my son ina chair, to wear a smile and welcome him, and then to perform the healing. There was nothing to lose, so | began the next morning. Since that day, every morning following my active exercises and before | harvest the qi, I ask for Master Lin’s help, visualize my son, and perform the healing. I took Level Two and learned more about the full healing procedure—the 9-3-9, opening C-7, etc. I asked the instructor whether I should incorporate the full routine when I healed my son. He said, “Absolutely,” and so | did. Two weeks later I found out that six days after I expanded the healing procedure, my son quit drinking. As far as I know, he hasn’t had a drink since; but, of course, alcoholism is a “one-day-at-a-time” disease, so I can’t stop my morning healings. And that’s fine with me. It’s a special bond between us—one he doesn’t 47