Who Are We? Inspiration from Journey to the West, 1986

There is a famous Chinese Drama, Journey to the West that has been repeated on TV thousands of times since it’s release in 1986. It is a classical fantasy show, but it closely explores how we function as a human. It’ll help us to focus our attention on ourselves more than the outside world. Feeling more whole and connected, while giving our body a chance to heal and be more at peace in the mind.

But the average person does not do that. They feel obligated to do other things. Social pressure, family pressure, work pressure.

Spirit/Eighth-Sense

Tangseng/唐僧，the person who is on the horse represents our Eighth-Sense, spirit. This is mentioned in Xuanzang’s poem, which is mentioned in the book of Perfect Self-relationship and course lessons.

Xuanzang, was very dedicated to find out how the being ‘human’ works. He could help people to engage themselves effectively. Legacies said that before his journey to the west he had lived ten lives. With them, he engaged good deeds to benefit humanity.

The three people around him call him master, are his loyal disciples. His character is soft, gentle, quiet, kind, receptive, respective, polite, he has a lot of wisdom, but he remains humble.

He doesn’t do much on the journey, he was taking good care of by his three disciples.

In life, if we know what makes us tick, our calling, our purpose, then we found our spirit. If we not know, there are ways to find out. Sitting quietly writing out what make you truly happy, normally can take you there. Or just listen to your heart from moment to moment. Your heart can take you to wonderful places and achieve wonderful goals. Our heart knows if we listen quietly, do things whole heartedly, no matter what we do, it will naturally expand, we will grow with it and it’ll take us somewhere better, it always does. We need to focus our attention on something, a boat without direction can go nowhere.

Physical /Five senses

Wujing /悟净, he represents our five senses, or present. He is the person behind the master, carrying heavy supplies. Wujing is a person down to earth; he works hard, and he never complains. He has a just, reliable, and pleasant personality. His role is to protect the truth, centred and humble.

Mental/Our Sixth-sense

Bajie/ 八戒/ represents our seven-sense, the ego. He is the person with big ears, has a big stomach, he carries a rake.He has a lot of wants and desires, he is a person ready to quit, a self-centred character. His role is to show people he has a personal want. Unlike the rest of the people, the rest three are heart and soul in the same direction, he is the only one who has personal desires. But the monkey and the teacher has power over him, he had to obey the rule.

Emotion/Our Seven-sense

Wukong/悟空, represents our six-sense, or heart. The person in front, with a pair of sharp eyes, alert, light bodied and ready to go.

He can travel 108,000 miles with a summersault. Wukong can be mischievious, knows where to find all the help he and can overcome all their difficulties on their journey to the west; he has no rule, no boundaries, he is fearless, deathless, carefree.

Wukong is knowing, wide and capable, he can transform anything he chooses. He shows we can train our sixth-sense, the monkey heart, to work for us. The heart is what Chinese call our six-sense, and it will bring to us, if we have the heart trained. We are the spirit, the power, the decision maker. We can win life in a big way in the most unimaginable way.

It is wise for us to convince our seventh-sense to work for us. It is powerful, and has unlimited ways that our conscious mind does not know and can get to anywhere. Heaven, earth, seas, saints, angels, to help us get what we want. It knows how to get what we desire in the shortest time. The most exciting and perfect way. As long as we once we get our seven-sense convinced to help us to achieve our goal. We can rest in peace, just listen to its call for next action. The heart will get for us in most cases, if it requires our help, we will be pulled to it.

Our seven-sense picks certain parts of life makes us, decides it likes this more and that less. It makes random decisions, it doesn’t like to take responsible, it likes to blame others to make self sounds better, an untrained seven-sense lead our life by default won’t have much hope to be a successful one.

How to Train our Seventh-sense

A little suggest to train your seventh-sense.

First, we must be patient.

As our heart has been everywhere all the time for many years, it is wild, it loves to jump from place to place; so we have to remind it to slow down for us as often as possible especially at the beginning.

Second, try to make friend with our seventh-sense, through coxing or praising and listening deeply.

We keep a conversation with our heart, get to know its nature, making friend with it. We cox the heart into our game and we listen what the heart has to say. Listen deeply, attentively; a true art, it allows all high sources to speak through us, low vibe won’t be able to reach a peaceful mind.

Third, making some agreement, unbreakable boundaries.

We need to be firm, do as we say, both parties take the boundaries seriously. If we are out boundaries, we punish ourselves, making the painful punishment we really want to avoid.

If we are determined to train the monkey, our seven-sense, our heart, it will more and more live in the boundary we set, just be persistent, not one day breaks the boundary is ok, another day is not, so the monkey can learn what is ok, what is not sooner or later. Sometimes, the spirit teachers tell us, we don’t need to set goals, life will guide us, as long as we have our heart in the right place, like Tangzeng, the spirit, kind, gentle, pleasant, loving, a God-like character, what we need to do next, we will be called by the bigger spirit, as we are connected to the whole universe, when we are quiet enough, we can hear the bigger call, we don’t have to go out and look, life will find us.

Bonus

Once we get our heart to behave nicely, soft, gentle, kind, present, not going out to other places much at all, we can live an effortless life, we don’t have to go out searching for happiness, happiness will come to find us.

The person who acted as Tangzeng, Chongrui Chi, who is a gentle present person, all his senses are working together as one, I guess, like water, he’s following human nature. His wife now, Chen Lihua, is one of the richest persons in China, asked him to marry her and they have been living together happily ever since.

If you want to know more how to train the monkey, it is also called the subconscious mind, it has many faces, there are many ways to do it. Talk to it, influences it by positive words, wonderful pictures and visions, make it feel it is worth its effort, coxing it into the action and destiny or ask it to merge you into the God-like character. Our beingness carries much more power than what we do or what we have, ask the seven-sense to help you to be a God-like character—l calm, pleasant, loving, joyful, generosity, just, serene, tranquillity…and let luck finds us, just travelling with life force with ease and grace.