Before my best selling T’ai Chi book sold worldwide and my founding of a global healing event (now held in 50 countries annually) began, I experienced 3 miracles. The 2nd one was the beginning of the angelic visitations.
When I first began learning Tai Chi/Qigong I knew I had found something important and powerful. But, when I tried to teach my family they weren’t interested, and it got to the point that at family reunions they’d kind of cringe when they saw me coming, because they knew I was going to try to teach them that “weird” T’ai Chi stuff again. So, eventually I became disheartened and stopped trying to teach people.
But, a few years later my mother called and asked me and my brother and sisters to come back because she was having a routine angioplasty, which was a strange request because the doctor said it was quite simple, not a big deal at all. A year before Mom had had a much more serious heart surgery and didn’t ask any of us to come back. As you’ll see my mother had a premonition of her death.
Looking back on it, I think somehow I could have known as well. From the moment I saw my mother in the wheelchair in the lobby there was something ethereal about her, as if she glowed in a silvery light. I don’t think I ever saw anyone so at peace before, she looked like those sanguine images of Jesus we saw in Sunday school, as if not a care in the world, certain that all was right going where it should.
The next morning we were all waiting in the waiting room, ready to bolt for a later breakfast as soon as it was over, and then the doctor walked in. He took down his mask and announced, “I’m sorry . . . but she didn’t make it.” Such a wave of sorrow swept through that room, like I have never felt. It began with my father and washed through me and then around the room in a circle, as we all wept collapsing against one another. Later one of my sisters said she felt as though my mother had passed through each of our hearts like a gentle breeze, a final embrace of the hearts, and looking back I think she was right.
Anyway, my sisters went to clear out my Mother’s room later, and they found a poetry book I had loaned her the night before. In the book she had written me a note that read, “I wish I could go back a couple of years to learn the arts of relaxation for a healthier mind and body that you tried to teach me, for I so would have loved to see my grandchildren grow up.” You see both my parents died of stress disease, as do most people today. 70% of all illness is due to unmanaged stress I would later learn.
I learned this and many other facts around this, as my mother’s powerful affirmation of what I knew were important tools, in Tai Chi & Qigong, led me to begin teaching them in the strangest places. Steeled by Mom’s confirmation of my teaching I eventually began teaching Tai Chi & Qigong for executives and employees of many of the world’s largest corporations, health networks, medical universities, primary, jr. high, high school, and college classes, and even in prison rehabilitation programs.
As you may know, this eventually led to my organizing World T’ai Chi & Qigong Day which is now held in over 50 countries annually and has received congratulations from the UN World Health Organization, the governors of Connecticut and South Carolina, and mayors worldwide. Also, it led to my writing what quickly became the #1 best selling book on T’ai Chi, surpassing hundreds of other T’ai Chi books written by great established masters. Which leads to the next miracle.
I lost my youngest son about 15 years ago. This caused me to walk away from a secure corporate job, into . . . nothingness. Suddenly all the “important” things in my life didn’t matter at all. I emptied myself of the world, throwing myself into T’ai Chi & Qigong meditation, to cleanse, to release my attachments to all that I gripped in my mind and heart. Then a series of angelic experiences began to occur.
One night at about 3 am (each of these experiences occurred at 3 am), a “voice” came to me and explained “I am about to show you what life could be like.” Then a brilliant light, a luminescence, expanded in the center of my brain and immediately a similar lightness expanded within my heart. Almost instantly they expanded to merge and expanded on outward, so that soon it seemed as though I had become this expanding lightness, or radiance. I saw the walls of my room getting closer, the ceiling, then the beams in the attic, the underside of the shingles, and then BURSTING upward through the pine trees around our home, I could see my house shrinking beneath as I expanded outward into the sky. The platinum clouds drifted by and behind as I saw the palm trees in the neighborhood shrinking, and then Huntington Beach getting smaller, the California coastline, the United States, and the Earth itself.
This feeling was the quintessence of beauty and safety, it was pure knowledge and faith, I have never felt so perfect, so loved, so naked, and so forgiven. Suddenly, I could feel all the pain, the anguish, the hope, and the love in the world all at once. It was as if my heart were being shattered open, almost like the night I’d held my tiny son dying in my arms months before. But, although it is difficult to explain this was the most exquisite feeling, because as my heart was broken it was “opened.” Through my absolute sorrow my shattered heart became open to a world of feelings. Every sin I had ever committed was apparent in this expanding light, but what was strange and so beautiful was that even before I became conscious of the sin, I was conscious of being so completely and beautifully forgiven for it. This light that I had become and expanded within, knew no judgment, only love. It understood perfectly why each act occurred, and only wanted me to forgive myself so that I could expand further. Without words it made it clear that blame against ourselves or others was severely limiting the expansion of humanity, and it was so important for us to learn to love ourselves, so that we knew we deserved the world of our dreams.
Then suddenly, “I became afraid.” Perhaps afraid that I was dying, I’m not sure. But, what I do know, is that the very instant I became afraid, this expansive vision collapsed. I felt myself falling backward and inward at the speed of light, collapsing fully back into my body with the sound of finality like some great cosmic vault door was being slammed shut. I suddenly realized I was sitting bolt upright in my bed at approximately 3am. What had seemed like a universe of experience, that has taken me years to try to explain (and still have much more to explain about is) apparently happened in a fraction of a moment in normal time.
That cool Southern California night with the silver moon lighting the world outside, I got out of bed and began to write. Writing was something I had never done before, especially “poetry.” But write I did, and with a tremendous fury. For the next several months I had ideas, poems, stories, that flowed from me like a great spring broken open. These writings began to lay out what would become the #1 best selling T’ai Chi book, and also the plans for a worldwide event now called World T’ai Chi & Qigong Day, that would expose tens of millions worldwide to the powerful mind/body health/spirit growth tools of Tai Chi & Qigong.
Then the third largest of this series of miracles occurred. This flow of consciousness expressing through me was very strange, and the writing itself was stretching my limits. You see I’d never written poetry before, and had always thought of it as kind of a “sissy” thing when growing up. So, over time I began to feel foolish. My glowing mind was bubbling with ideas, but they weren’t putting bread on the table, and didn’t seem to make much sense at the time, so I was about to give it all up. But then a very strange thing happened.
I got a call out of the blue from an older sister in Kansas, that began with a very strange conversation. Her calling in itself was strange, because she rarely called, but it quickly became much stranger, when she said, “Mom came to me in a dream last night and said I should call you and tell you about it.” As you now know, our mother had died years before, and the tone of this phone call was so unlike my sister, I sat rapt waiting hear what she would say next. She went on, “Mom came to me in a dream last night and took me to a white room with a stack of white papers in the middle of it. She began showing me the papers, exclaiming ‘look what your brother Jr.’s been doing.”
I was stunned. Mom had always called me Jr. and the familiarity of it was as if my Mom were speaking directly to me. No one had known I was writing anything, including my sister, so this was overwhelming that my Mom had been watching me through this from wherever she was, and thought it was important enough to tell my sister to contact me. I asked my sister what was on the papers, and this really sent me over the top, and I wept.
My sister explained, “The papers were a big stack of poetry, and two books that have something to do with children.” This was exactly what I had written at this time. The poetry book would soon grow into many books, but at this time all I had was the poetry book and the two children’s book manuscripts, and that is exactly what my Mom had told my sister.” But, there was much more.
“Mom, told me to tell you something, and she said it is very important that you hear it. She said that you are doubting yourself, this is so unlike your past and you don’t see that it matters. But it does. Mom told you to look back in history and note that often those who changed the world were not those heavy with official titles or recognition, but were simple ordinary men and women who manifested their spiritual side. Mom said you and others need to hear this. She said your writing will help others feel more comfortable doing this themselves as they read of your experiences. Mom said that it is very important that you keep writing, and keep doing what you are doing, staying clear and open, manifesting your spiritual side.”
And I did. I didn’t know at the time that it would produce a mind/body health book that would be praised by top experts in the field worldwide, or that it would lead to tens of thousands coming together every year in countries worldwide to educate tens of millions worldwide about ancient tools that can help heal our troubled future. I had to learn to walk in faith to see this come to what it was to become. A series of miracles made it possible, as did my mother and my son. From the ashes of my greatest most wracking losses came the seeds of what would become the greatest experience of my life. The circle became complete.