How would I define “spiritual”? It is a tough question. Since English is not my first language, I am not sure if the “spirit” and “spiritual” that people talk about in English are similar to the meaning we mean in Chinese. I, however, would like to share my definition; and leave the question to you about whether I am talking about the same thing with yours.
According to the Webster English Dictionary, spiritual means:
1: of, relating to, consisting of, or affecting the spirit.
2 a: of or relating to sacred matters b: ecclesiastical rather than lay or temporal
3: concerned with religious values
4: related or joined in spirit
5 a: of or relating to supernatural beings or phenomena b: of, relating to, or involving spiritualism: spiritualistic
I agree with it. But then, what does spirit mean? According to the Path of life written by my father, our universe consists of four basic elements: time, space, matter, and spirit. The spirit here refers to the dynamic capabilities that surpass matter characteristic. It is the only element of the four that possess intentionality and has the ability to manipulate and use the other three elements.
To sum them up, I believe that a person who is spiritual should be a person who is willing to and able to explore the action and the intention of the spirit. He/she should also be a person who is willing to and able to be moral. Some people argue about that moral codes vary from culture to culture, even person to person, while I believe that there are some underlying common moral codes which are not difficult to find. You may just simply ask yourself how you want to be treated by others, what kind of people you would love to stay along with, then you just be that person. It is what I mean by being moral.
Based on my definition of “spiritual”, many experiences can be considered as spiritual experiences other than just those relative to the supernatural phenomena that could not be explained reasonably and completely by the mainstream belief systems at any time. But of course, those experiences are more profound in terms of invoking spiritual growth.
Since I was three months old, I have been a witness of something mysterious yet real and sacred. I have been surrounded by many mysterious spiritual experiences even though I do not have many such experiences myself.
Three months after I was born, my father started his agonized yet sacred and profound spiritual experiences with Pan Gu. Pan Gu began to talk to him and show him images in his mind about the origin, development, and future of the universe. Pan Gu also taught him a brand new theory about human structure and human health, which led him to create a powerful self-healing system called Pan Gu Shengong later. I was not, of course, aware of the spiritual at that time; and it hardly can be counted as my own experience; however, I considered it as the most significant moment in my spiritual life.
Since I was seven or eight years old, I began to hear about some of my father’s extraordinary experiences from his conversation with my mother and a few others. I felt curious and fascinated about it, but I seemed not be impacted too much because of the education of materialism and communism in China.
In 1989, my father self-published one thousand copies of his book the Path of Life, which depicted the first three months of his mysterious experience, sending them to experts and specialist on various fields. One day, he received a letter from a doctor who practiced Western medicine in a famous hospital in Guangzhou. In the letter, the doctor told my father how he cured his chronicle shoulder inflammation, his wife chronic headache, and his grandson’s acute fever by simply putting the Path of Life on the sick areas. Along with many other positive feedbacks, my father determined to create Pan Gu Shengong for people to heal themselves physically and spiritually. Although I was impressed by all these experiences, I did not practice Pan Gu Shengong and study the Path of Life seriously at that time because of the education from school, laziness, and some other reasons.
As more healing miracles happened to those who kept on practicing Pan Gu Shengong regularly, as more people in different fields showed high appreciation to the philosophy contained in the book The Path of Life, as I got to know for sure that my father and some of his outstanding students are able to give accurate diagnoses on a patient’s health condition in just a few minutes through their special sensing ability, I had to re-examine the knowledge I learned from school and mainstream society. In fact, at that time, I did have a few funny “spiritual” experiences that I did not take it serious. For example, when I entered a full-occupied restroom, I was able to tell which sub-room would be available first. It did not catch my attention until I decided to re-examine my worldview. I then tried to apply my father’s theory on analyzing the experience. I began to understand that human being actually possess many innate abilities when we are just born. We ignore, bury, and deny those abilities as we grow up because we tend to prefer material enjoyment and accept the dominated belief systems without thinking. Luckily, through some spiritual practices, we would be able to recall some of those losing abilities. It advanced me in my spiritual path. A bigger shift happened after I came to the United States in 2001.
The year 2001 is an important transition point in my life; it is the starting point of my deeper understanding of my father and his Pan Gu Shengong; it is the starting point of the change in quality of my values and norms.
I work for my father’s organization in the United States as a volunteer. Among my many duties, I work as a consultant. The counseling topics are varied, ranging from overviews of Pan Gu Shengong, to explaining what kinds of attitudes and actions a person should have for better healing results, to suggesting methods for better relationships, and even to talking about how to understand life and our universe. I consider this duty is a very profound spiritual practice and experience. It pushes me to practice Pan Gu Shengong daily and study its theory sincerely. As a result, I feel myself having spiritual growth year by year.
Doing Pan Gu Shengong exercise everyday is a very spiritual experience. Whenever I do the exercise, I can feel the qi/energy get into my body and move inside my body. I have many different sensations to the qi, such as warmth, coolness, numbness, and magnetism. After the practice, I feel vigorous, calm, centered, and grounded. More importantly, the daily practice of Pan Gu Shengong gives me healthy physical condition and happy mind-set. I haven’t been sick for the last seven years, not even catching a cold.
Another significant spiritual experience is the experiences in my father’s guided-imagery classes. In my father’s guided-imagery classes, I am able to see some scenes in my mind. His guided-imagery is different than most other guided-imagery. He guides people experience things by his intention instead of verbal guidance. Here is one of my experiences. We settled down in any position we preferred with eyes closed. I sat down on a chair with my palms up on my legs. After guiding us climb a ladder onto a bright heaven, he stopped the verbal guidance and started the intention guidance. I felt I was inside a strong energy field right from the beginning, then I felt warm—first with my hands, then my feet, then my entire body. I felt calm and peaceful deeper and deeper, then I saw a huge golden chrysanthemum. Suddenly my heart felt deeply touched by something and I burst into tears. A few minutes later, I was in a very beautiful environment where a vast glacier surrounded by shining red rocks. I also saw an eye and a pink heart at some point. These experiences make me realized that it feels so different between the experience that you really see something in your mind and the experience that you just have a thought about something in your mind. The more I experience, the more I believe that materialism is not enough to explain everything in this world. It is dangerous, however, according to my father’s teaching, to accept and believe everything you see or hear or feel from your spiritual experiences without rational analyzing. In fact, from a certain point of view, these kind of spiritual experiences are not more special than other normal daily life experiences. They are both experiences that you may study rationally with for your personal growth. With this understanding, I therefore do not consider my dreams as something I would brag about.
I start to dream before I fall into sleep. Therefore, there are at least a few minutes every night that I am aware of what I am dreaming about. For a few times, I was able to control the storyline of my dream as soon as I found out that I didn’t like the origin. I am able to remember one or two dreams every night if I want to. The contents of the dreams are very interesting too. For example, in January in the year 2008, I dreamed of Hilary Clinton would not become the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. I felt surprised about why I had this dream. Even though I did pay attention to the election, I was more like an observer with no preference on either Clinton or Obama. The fact does match my dream, but I do not consider I am psychic that I will believe all the information I dream of in the future. What I learned from this experience is that it is possible that human being has the potential ability to foresee things in the future and unbiased researches on this topic are needed. And certain spiritual practices could induce and develop this kind of potential ability.
With my own spiritual experiences, and especially with the observation on my father’s experiences, I believe that it’s possible to be spiritual and rational at the same time, and it’s necessary to be spiritual and rational at the same time in order to discover the truth behind the phenomena. I also learned that we must be humble, open-minded, and tolerant in order to make progress in our spiritual path. This explains why I suggest that being spiritual should mean being moral too. I noticed I become more patient, thoughtful, and soft these few years. It is a very productive relationship between my personality and my spiritual part.
I will continue to pay attention to my spiritual experiences and learn from them humbly.
Moreover, as I wrote this article, I recall quite a few profound spiritual experiences. I will share them with you soon ^_^. And I wish I can hear your feedback and your spiritual growth stories as well.
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