What is mercy? Is mercy not that which sets all life free, setting free both the giver and the receiver of mercy? Is it not so, then that it is extremely important for people to realize that when you give forgiveness, when you give mercy, you set yourself free? Is it not equally important to realize that in so many situations in life, in so many situations on the planet, the only way to achieve personal or national freedom is to show unconditional mercy, unconditional forgiveness?

There is a need to forgive unconditionally in order to set the nations and the people of Europe free from the scars and burdens of the second world war. Does this not apply equally here in Korea and in Asia? There comes a point where one needs to recognize that one cannot change the past. If all the mighty emperors of China, or of any nation, stepped forward in all their splendor, in all their power, could any of them change the slightest thing that happened in the past? 

You cannot turn back the clock; you cannot go back in time and change what happened in the past. What can you do? You can change how the past affects your mind in the present. When you change how your mind is affected by the past, then you have also changed how the past will affect the course you take as you or your nation flow on in the ongoing river of life.

Is there room for growth in Buddhism?

There are many deep teachings to be found in the East. There are many deep teachings that come out of the various directions found within Buddhism. We not say the religion of Buddhism, for although so many people in the West like to label Buddhism as a religion, many people in the East know that it is not a religion as it is seen in the West. It is more a system that flows on and transcends.

Of course, we must be aware that even Buddhism has fallen prey to the human tendency to want to ritualize and organize everything. You may visit even the temple here in downtown Seoul and see the huge statues of the Buddha and the intricate details of the temple. You may then ask yourself: “Given how the Buddha lived, given how he taught in a very simple ashram, how did it go from that simple origin to something so elaborate, so organized, so ritualized?”

Where is the room for the flow of higher awareness in a system that has become so ritualized that it makes it very difficult for people to express higher individuality? Where is the room for individuality in such a ritualized system? And therefore, where is the room for growth?

You can change only in the now

Nevertheless, you can find many profound teachings that come out of Buddhism. One is that some of the unwritten teachings of the Buddhist’s in Tibet portray life as an ongoing flow. We can call it the River of Life.

When you understand the River of life, you understand that it is a process. This is important to keep in mind because the human mind, especially when it has been affected by the dualistic consciousness, wants to organize everything in a linear fashion. Certainly, you may say that this tendency to linear thinking is more prevalent in the West than in the East, but you also find it in the East because it is a general human tendency.

You think in terms of time and you divide time into past, present and future. You are so focussed on either the past or the future that you ignore the now. The now is the only time in which you can change direction. If you are not in the now, you cannot change direction consciously. If you do not change direction consciously, then your past will determine your future. It is only in the now that you can consciously change direction so that your future will be a different course than the one you were on before you became conscious and before you made that decision to change.

When you truly understand this concept of the River of Life, you realize that there is no final, end result to be achieved. This is profound. This is important to contemplate, for you have been so used to thinking in terms of certain final, end results that must be achieved or the consequences are dire. We have talked about the epic mindset that portrays life as a struggle between good and evil and there is a result that must be achieved, namely that good eradicates evil. If good does not win over evil, then evil will take over and take all souls to a dark place. This has no reality whatsoever, no reality whatsoever. It exists only in the minds of human beings who have been seduced by the duality consciousness, led by the manipulators, to fight for this ultimate cause that is supposedly justified by some epic philosophy.

Communism is an obvious example of such an epic philosophy where there is an end goal that must be attained, namely the spreading of communism throughout the world. Do you not see also how the Christian religion has been influenced by this epic mindset? Again, all people must be converted to Christianity or they will end up in a fiery hell that truly does not exist for it was never created by God.

Life is an ongoing process

The River of Life is an ongoing process. It is an ongoing process because it is created by all of the self-aware beings that exist in your sphere. There have been other spheres before yours and these other spheres have all ascended because the inhabitants of those spheres brought that sphere to the ascension point by raising their consciousness. Based on this, one might say: “Is that not an end goal?”

It is not an end goal in an epic sense. It is, in fact, not an end goal, for when one sphere ascends what then happens? Those who have raised their consciousness sufficiently to cause their sphere to ascend, now raise their consciousness even more by co-creating the next sphere and by sending extensions of their own beings to inhabit and embody in that sphere. So there is ongoingness.

There is no end goal. There is no end, as there was truly no beginning, for everything is an ongoing flow. Since the linear human mind cannot deal with an ongoing flow with no beginning and ending, it desperately wants to create some epic tale that there was a beginning and there will be an ending.

Earth cannot change the universe

When you recognize that life is a flow, you realize that planet earth is a very small planet in a very large universe. Although there are 7 billion lifestreams in embodiment on earth, this is a very small number compared to the innumerable lifestreams that exist in your sphere. The vast majority of those lifestreams are raising their consciousness to increasingly higher levels, and this is what has created the River of Life that pulls on everything in your sphere to come up higher.

If you only know the earth, if you only focus on the earth, you could potentially fall prey to the illusion of the manipulators, namely that the earth can influence the universe or can influence God or God’s plan. When you recognize the Law of Free Will – and realize just how many lifestreams are in your sphere and how many lifestreams have chosen to join the River of Life – then you see that there is no way that the earth or the lifestreams on the earth can influence the whole.

You are such a small part of the whole that you cannot pull it backwards. Therefore, you need to recognize that you are being pulled upwards by the entire universe. Although you have free will and can resist this upward pull, it becomes increasingly difficult to resist. This is the second law of thermodynamics where, when you turn yourself or your nation into a closed system, it requires more and more resistance to maintain that closedness.

Therefore, there will come that point where you can no longer generate the force needed to resist the upward flow of the River of Life. This means that what makes your system closed must and will break down. This holds for an individual, it holds for a nation, it holds for humanity as a whole.

Isolationism in Korea

When you look at the history of Korea, you see the tendency (that you also see in other areas in Asia) to isolate and insulate yourselves from the surrounding world. This is a tendency that is directly against the River of Life. You cannot survive in the long run by isolating and insulating yourself.

It can be very difficult to understand this, and in terms of the Korean people there is a special twist. When you look at the people in the larger area of Korea and when you look back in time, when you look today especially here in South Korea, you see that you belong to a people who are peaceful, peace-loving people. You desire to have peace.

Why have you not then had peace in your history? Why are you divided today? Because peace cannot be attained through control, through attempting to control your outer situation, through attempting to stop the flow and create a static state where you think you have everything under control and therefore you can maintain peace.

You cannot maintain peace through control. You can maintain peace only by flowing with the River of Life whereby you are constantly adapting to changing circumstances. When you attempt to close yourself off from the world, then you are creating a resistance and you must generate a force to uphold the resistance. This will either create internal conflict or it will attract an outside conqueror who will attempt to take over.

Now, it is very understandable that a peace-loving people want to create peace. They want to create a peaceful, harmonious society. When peace is taken to an unbalanced state, then even peace can become a source of control, a source of resistance and thereby a source of conflict. The River of Life does not require effort. You do not need to exercise great effort to flow with the River of Life. It is when you desire to go to one extreme or the other extreme that it requires effort. That is why even a positive quality, like peace, can be used in an unbalanced way that still leads you to a situation where you are resisting the flow.

North Korea is not the problem

This is important to understand in understanding how a peaceful people could come to a point where you have endured invasions, occupations and now, for so many years, you have endured this division of your own nation between North and South. It is also important to understand this so you can begin to see how you can overcome this division and what is the only way to overcome the division. This, of course, is something that also applies to other nations in Asia where you see similar tendencies.

You have come to the point you are at right now because you have resisted the flow of the River of Life. You may look at the situation right now. You may identify a certain problem, as the linear mind has a tendency to do when it is affected by the duality consciousness and the epic mindset. You want to identify a problem and you want to identify a physical cause of the problem, and that usually means that some other people are identified as the cause of the problem.

You may therefore say: “South Korea is a non-communist nation with far greater freedom and democracy than North Korea. Therefore, when it comes to the division of the Korean peninsula, North Korea is the problem.” You may then identify the leaders of North Korea as the problem or the people as the problem or both as the problem. You might sit here and say that they are the ones who have to change before we can have peace.

Now, from a human viewpoint this is not an unreasonable sentiment. Certainly, higher awareness is not condoning what the leaders of North Korea are doing to you or to their own people. It is not condoning the attitude that has been programmed into the North Korean people. It is not saying that they do not need to change. Of course, there needs to be change in North Korea, for they are far more unbalanced than South Korea. This is why you see North Korea having to exercise greater and greater effort to keep their own country and their own people under control of this small leadership. There is no question that this is an unbalanced state, and higher awareness is not condoning or excusing what is happening there.

The point is to show you that if you, the people and the leaders of South Korea, point to the North as the problem, what are you doing? You are disempowering yourself. You are saying we cannot bring peace to Korea because peace cannot be brought until they change.

How South Korea can bring change

How likely is it that they will change anytime soon when they have not done it for so long? You can all see that it is not very likely. The choice that you face is: Will you wait for them to change or will you do something to bring about change?

What higher awareness desires you to recognize, especially you who are the more aware people, is that because of the way the Law of Free Will works, you are never disempowered. You are never pacified. You are never in a situation where there is nothing you can do.

What you can do as the more aware people is to walk the path and raise your own consciousness, seek to manifest higher discernment, do your energetic work and also speak out whenever you have the opportunity. What could be done collectively, as the nation of South Korea (and as the other nations who are involved in the equation of the divided Korea) is to take a stance and say: “What can we change that will change the equation?”

When you have a mathematical equation, you have certain factors on one side, you have an equal sign and then you have a result on the other side. You may have several factors on the left side, and as long as those factors remain the same, the result on the other side will remain the same. If you change one factor on the left side, you will change the result. You can do something to change the equation on the Korean peninsula by changing your own approach to the situation.

Albert Einstein was inspired to say that you cannot solve a problem with the same state of consciousness that created the problem. He also said that if you keep doing the same thing over and over and over again, but you expect that one day you will get a different result, well then you are insane. What you see going on in many areas of life on this planet in the situation between nations is a form of insanity. People think that we don’t need to change, we need to keep doing the same thing and then one day these other people will magically change.

Seeing the value of forgiveness

This is not the way progress happens. Progress happens when someone looks at the situation and decides that they will no longer be disempowered. They will take back their power to do something about the situation and then they will do whatever they can do. What you need to begin to visualize, as the aware people, is that the people of South Korea come to understand the value of mercy and forgiveness.

Surely, there is much to forgive, but the value of forgiveness is that when you forgive, you set both the other people and yourselves free. The only way to be free is to let go, to forgive, to show mercy. You cannot turn back the clock to the time before Korea was divided. You can only look at the situation as it is, and then you can accept two things. First of all, the situation is as it is. Second of all, we achieve nothing by holding on to the past, by being angry or hurt about the past. We achieve nothing constructive that is! You do achieve the fact of keeping yourself tied to the past and the consciousness of the past.

What will it take to change the situation? So many times people look at a physical situation and they say that this and this needs to change in the physical situation. Yet there are four levels of the material universe and the physical conditions you see are only a reflection of the images held in the consciousness of the people at the three higher levels. What it will take to change the physical situation is first of all a shift in consciousness.

There must be a shift in consciousness before there can be physical change. This shift in consciousness has already begun because many people have chosen to embody in both North and South Korea in order to bring about this change. You, who are the aware people, can have a tremendous impact in terms of reinforcing this tendency by your own growth, by your own shift in awareness, by your energy work. You can become the forerunners, the ones that are, so to speak, directing and steering the ship. You know that if you have a large ship with a large wheel that turns the rudder, then even a slight change of the rudder, even a slight change of the wheel, will cause the ship’s course to change a little bit. In the short run you may not see it, but in the long run you will see a big change. That is why just a few people can have a tremendous impact.

Change must begin in South Korea

The change that needs to happen is a change in consciousness, and it must begin in the South because you are the more free nation, you are the more aware nation. When higher awareness looks at a nation, it does not first of all look at the outer manifestations. Certainly, the outer conditions in a nation are an indication of the consciousness of the people.

What South Korea has achieved since the war, since the near total destruction that followed from the war, is tremendous progress. This progress in the physical could not have been achieved if there had not been a change in the higher levels of consciousness also, but the change can be accelerated further. What higher awareness looks at is not just the outer conditions but first of all the consciousness of the people, the collective consciousness. Korea is the key to Asia because, when higher awareness looks at nations, it sees that the people of South Korea have achieved a high level of self-awareness where you are aware of yourselves, what you are doing, what you have achieved in your society.

It will not take very much to bring this to a higher level where you also are more aware of yourselves as non-material beings and of your higher potential. When there is this shift, the people can begin to see (and even the politicians, who are often the last ones to see it, will begin to see) that if there is going to be a dramatic change in the relationship with North Korea, then South Korea needs to bring about that change. And the change needs to be brought about by doing something differently than has been done before.

Overcome the desire to punish

The Korean people, and many among the Korean leaders, would like to see reunification, but certainly also a greater openness, cooperation and interchange. This is the change that could be accelerated by realizing that you cannot change the past, and in order to be free from the past you must forgive, you must let go. You cannot have the attitude that those who caused the conflicts and the atrocities of the past must be punished for their actions. If you have the desire to punish, you cannot forgive. It cannot be done. Therefore, you must overcome the desire to make someone responsible.

This is not saying that no one is responsible. Certainly, there are people who are responsible and who were responsible for what happened in the past. Rest assured that the law will hold those people responsible for their actions and they will not escape their karma. That is why you, who are in embodiment, need to recognize the wisdom of the saying where God said to the Israelites: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.”

The meaning is that God will make sure that all will reap what they have sown. All will be held accountable for their actions, and therefore you, who are in embodiment, do not need to set yourselves up as the ones who carry out the punishment of others. If you do so, you only tie yourself to the dualistic consciousness where you make them wrong and you set yourselves up as the judges who will punish others. When you do this, what are you sending into the cosmic mirror? That you desire to continue in a situation where there is a dualistic struggle, where you are in a struggle with someone else.

How shall there be reunification of Korea? Only when both North and South transcend the dualistic struggle, and who is capable of doing this first? Certainly, the South. There needs to be an awareness that we cannot approach the North as if they have done something wrong and they deserve to be punished.

More openness with North Korea

You need to recognize a very simple fact, and you can get a hint of this by looking at the situation in China. Look at how the West attempted to deal with The Soviet Union during the cold war. There was constant conflict, constant opposition. In the end, was it this constant resistance that caused the Soviet Union to collapse? Nay, it was not. It was actually the internal resistance that caused it to collapse.

With China, the West took a different approach, and it was to seek more openness, more interaction, more business dealings. You may not want to make a direct comparison between the regime in North Korea and the regime that existed in China three or four decades ago, but is there really such a big difference? If the West could trade with China – and ignore what China did in terms of human rights abuses, ignore the communist system but still trade – then would it not be possible to do the same with North Korea?

What has been the effect of trading with China? It has more than anything else been an interchange between the Chinese people and people outside of China. What is it that causes a nation to stagnate, to close itself off, to go in to a downward spiral, to see itself as a fear-based nation surrounded by enemies that it must constantly resist? It is that there is no interchange between the people of that nation and people in the greater world. The people inside the fortress never have an impression, a frame of reference, of how other people look at life, look at the world, look at themselves.

You may point to many physical things that have been part of changing the equation with China, but the most important thing is the exchange of information and consciousness between the Chinese people and those in the greater world. This has caused tremendous changes to happen in China, and it has brought China to a point where it would be impossible for the Chinese leadership to turn back the clock and reinforce the same control by a centralized system that you saw those decades ago.

What do you see in North Korea? The people are isolated from the surrounding world. What does this mean? They believe everything they are told by their leaders, for they have no frame of reference, they have nothing with which to compare the information they get from their leaders. How will they know whether what their leaders are telling them is true if they do not interact with other people? Can you see the need to change policy so that the nations need to start treating North Korea, even the North Korean leadership, as any other nation, as a nation we can negotiate with, we can do business with, we can interact with?

Again, this is not condoning what is happening within North Korea, what the North Korean leaders are doing. It is only pointing out that by greater openness from the surrounding world, there would begin to be much more of an interchange of ideas and consciousness and this would inevitably change North Korea.

The risk for nuclear war

It is true, of course that continuing the policy of isolation will reinforce the internal resistance built up by the Korean leadership and the people loyal to them. Sooner or later North Korea will collapse from within, but what will be the cost of doing this? There is a potential that a regime that sees the handwriting on the wall, will do something desperate to prolong their existence.

In the final days of the Soviet Union, there was a very real risk that some among the Soviet Leadership would have seized power and would have launched a military campaign with nuclear weapons and conventional weapons to maintain their control of the Soviet Union. It was a real risk.

There is, again, a risk in North Korea. Even if this does not happen, the internal collapse of North Korea would create tremendous suffering for the North Korean people, much more than they have endured so far—and they have endured much. This, of course, is not what you desire to see. Many of them are your family members; they are your spiritual brothers and sisters. That is why there is a necessity to rethink policy and to become more open towards a nation that is so closed that all involved can only benefit from greater openness.

Resistance from Japan, the U. S. and China

In this regard, there will be a special resistance, first of all from Japan but also from the United States. This is because Japan is too concerned about the competition that would come from a united Korea, which would be much stronger economically. There is also a certain fear of military conflict. This is not saying this is well-founded, it is only pointing out what is going on in the Japanese leadership and to some degree the people.

There is a recognition, mostly subconscious, in Japan that the Korean people are far more creative than the Japanese people and therefore have the potential to overtake Japan as an economic power. Because Japan has not managed to bring itself out of its own downward spiral that is caused by a lack of creativity, they do not want the Korean people to go ahead of them. There is a certain desire to hold Korea back and this you can do energy work on.

Even in the United States, there is a resistance towards a united Korea. This is because there are people in the United States who are still so trapped in the dualistic mindset that they want to maintain the illusion of an epic struggle. This is unfortunately a factor that the American people have not freed themselves from, which you can see if you follow the presidential campaign and the statements made by one of the candidates. You will, of course, also see it in many other politicians in the United States. There is a hidden power elite of the United States that does not want to lose the tension and thereby the mechanisms for control that a divided Korea gives them. Nor do they want to lose the tremendous income that some make from weapons that, of course, will be unnecessary if there is no longer tension.

There are, of course, also forces in China who are resisting a united Korea, for they believe that they will have greater influence over the North than they would have over a united Korea. There is also a certain fear there of the economic power of a united Korea. There is opposition from Russia, but less so because currently the Russian leadership have their attention focused elsewhere.

Nevertheless, it is wise of you to work for the exposure and the consuming of this opposition to a united Korea. There will need to be a shift in the international sentiment towards the situation in order for the change to happen. Again, you, who are the aware people, can become the forerunners for a dramatic change whereby you will awaken and align the many people in North and South Korea who have embodied here for the purpose of bringing down into physical manifestation the golden age matrix for Korea.

Only light can change Korea

You have already well begun. As they say, “Well begun is halfway done,” but still it can require some work to get that other half to be a physical reality. Be not blind to the fact that there are people from other nations outside Korea, who can help open up pathways of light that will bring about the changes that need to happen in the international community. Therefore, you together can bring forth the impetus for a change in the collective consciousness both in South Korea, in North Korea and in the other nations that are part of the equation. Changing one factor in the equation, changes the end result, but when you begin to change all of the factors, then you shift the end result even more.

Those of you who are from Korea, you need to free yourself from all elements of this resentment, anger, desire to punish. You need to forgive and to let go because only by emptying yourselves from these lower feelings, will you become the open doors for the light from higher awareness. It is, as always, only the light from higher awareness that will truly change the equation.

Imagine the equation of Korea. You have an end result, you have an equal sign and you have certain factors. These factors are the nations involved: South Korea, North Korea, the United States, Japan, China, Russia and so forth. Now you add another factor and that is the more aware people in Korea and elsewhere working together with higher awareness. Suddenly, you have a factor that can become far more powerful because you have a higher level of awareness than all of the other factors.

If you can free yourself from the non-forgiveness, the lack of mercy, you will have a higher awareness than any of the leaders of the nations involved, you will have a higher awareness than the collective consciousness. Therefore, your impact on the equation will be far greater, for it is not only the number of people that multiplies the effect but also the level of awareness and the level of openness, the willingness to be the truly open door for the light from the higher awareness.

When you are the open door through your total forgiveness, then higher awareness can become another factor in the equation. Then, you will see change happen almost as in the blink of an eye. You will look back in the not-too-distant future and scarcely believe that such a dramatic change could happen so quickly. People will say: “But how did it happen? What brought it about?” They will look for physical causes of this change and they will find none, for the cause is the figure-eight flow between you in embodiment and higher awareness, the River of Life that is more powerful than any physical cause.