Chapter Ten

Noah walked the busy streets of New York with renewed appreciation. He tasted the essence of the Big Apple as if it were his first and most intoxicating bite. The bustle, the hustle, the foot traffic that pumped continuously like blood flowing through veins. He was awestruck by the vibrancy of the yellow cabs, the mouthwatering scent of sausage and hotdogs and the glorious mix of the tragic and ostentatious displayed at the turn of every corner. The city brimmed with life. It truly was magical.

What struck him the most were the people. A street performer played the saxophone with so much passion that you would have thought his life depended on every note being played to perfection. The sounds of laughter, people rushing importantly to and fro, young tourists snapping candid shots, stretching their limbs in exaggerated poses, men in suits who talked too loudly on mobile phones. Noah was fascinated.

His eyes had been closed to the beauty of this city for more than thirty years. He wondered what could have possibly been so important that it blinded him to this vibrant kaleidoscope of human life.

He knew the answer. He had rushed importantly to and fro while talking loudly on his cellphone, scarcely noticing the people that he walked with. He had been preoccupied with establishing his prominence. Because he wanted so much to matter that nothing else mattered.

He stopped in front of a shop window. Noah’s eyes shifted to the reflective surface of the glass, and he saw himself in present time.

The man he saw reflected in the window wasn’t happy. He had earned the best that life had to offer, but had lost sight of what was important in the process. Beneath the title, beneath the carefully crafted persona of expertise, he was simply a human being who was born to enjoy the moments that this human life offered. He knew this intuitively when he was young, but had somehow lost his way.

He used to be the kind of man who loved the taste of tea, who spent hours memorizing every freckle along the surface of his wife’s body. He was a man who cried, overwhelmed with joy at the birth of his baby girl. But somehow thirty years had passed without the taste of tea.

He became the type of man who economized, gulping coffee to stay alert. His wife had aged, and he barely noticed. While he was busy soaking up the spotlight, she planned birthday parties, cooked Christmas dinners, drove their daughter to soccer practice and kissed him goodnight before falling asleep. Had she known? Was she awake and present for the moments of her life? Or had she also fallen into the mindless routine of tasks performed and achievements pursued? He wished that he could ask her.

Noah’s eyes shifted again, looking beneath the plate glass at a poster displayed in the window. The face of an Asian woman in her forties shone through, with pale skin, almond eyes and a delicate smile that hinted at a holy secret. She was purer than any person that Noah had witnessed before, her humanity was completely untouched. It was a strange picture to see displayed in the heart of Manhattan. It looked like it belonged posted on a temple wall in heaven.

Noah’s heart took a double beat.

He leaned closer to read the details of the text.

Her name was Suna.

Just one name, like Oprah or Madonna.

Noah had never heard of her before. His eyes scanned the next line of text.

She was giving a lecture on the spiritual significance of life and this was her twelve hundredth lecture on something called the ChunBuKyung, which was an ancient numerical codex from South Korea that mapped the origin and completion of the soul.

He checked his watch. The lecture had begun twenty minutes ago.

He opened the door to the hotel where her picture was displayed, grabbed a pamphlet on the lecture and made his way to the convention room where the event was located.

When he entered the auditorium, he found a place to stand behind the last row of seats in the room where approximately three hundred people sat in attendance.

At the front of the room sat the Korean woman whose picture had captured Noah’s attention in the window. She was everything her portrait professed. She was pure but had depth. A person could live a thousand years and not possess the untold galaxies of

wisdom that shone from her eyes. Her dark hair was fashioned in a chignon, and she wore a conservative dress made of fine ivory silk that buttoned up to her neck and fell to the floor. She rang a single brass bell between delicate fingers that glimmered in the stage lights and twinkled like the North Star.

Noah was transfixed.

Her voice carried through the auditorium with a full-bodied softness that swaddled each person as if every particle of ether were a tiny speaker cooing the ancient secret of the original mother directly into their ears.

“Actually, the ChunBuKyung was never meant to be a secret,” she said. “In the beginning of time, the ChunBuKyung was so obvious that it wasn’t necessary for it to be recorded on stone, parchment or paper. We knew what it was simply because our lives were infused within its wordless essence.

“But since we have ceased to perceive life from this original state of mind, it is difficult to understand that everything on the Earth, every particle of heaven, every atom in the human body is intimately connected as one at the foundation of reality. Until you feel it in your own body you will never get it.” She smiled. “And that is why I am here. Today you will understand the essence of the ChunBuKyung without me decoding it

character by character, because you will feel it for

yourself.”

She smiled, turning her attention to someone in the front row of the auditorium. “Everything is made of energy. You, me, the plant on this table, this bell. Everything is made of the energy of God but each thing expresses a unique chord of vibration that creates the illusion of difference. Nonetheless, at its very foundation it’s all the same, the one unchangeable essence of God.”

A powerful wave of heat overcame Noah, a tidal wave that crashed down from all sides. A sheen of sweat instantly manifested along the entire length of his body. He grabbed the chair that he stood behind for support. He couldn’t comprehend why the breathless sensation of drowning kept his lungs from taking a full inhalation. His lungs merely puffed within his ribcage like balloons as he took his breath in short gasps.

As abruptly as this stifling heat swept over him,

it passed.

He could breathe again.

He exhaled with a long sigh and drew a smooth

breath in.

He felt like he was floating. Like a baby drifting in a warm bath. He overflowed with the sensation of pure undiluted life.

The auditorium seemed to glimmer. Light shone around every object as if it were simply a holograph.

He rubbed his eyes.

Who is this woman?

As the thought passed through his mind, the woman at the front of the room paused, mid-sentence, turning her head quickly as if she had heard her name called. They locked eyes, and she spoke directly to him.

“From the foundational essence, all life is birthed into an unending kaleidoscope of forms. You are a beautiful life contained within that kaleidoscope. And just as the images of a kaleidoscope change, so do the many faces and forms of our world. But at the very foundation it’s all God. We are made from God, of God, existing in God.”

She broke eye contact with Noah, looked at another person in the audience and spoke gently, “Our species knew this intuitively at our origin. When this knowledge became obsolete, the ChunBuKyung was recorded and kept hidden through the dark ages in order to protect it from being destroyed by the religions and governments that would have sought to eliminate this knowledge at all costs.

“There is no other. We are one and the same. We are Self, experiencing itself in a myriad of forms. That is the message of the ChunBuKyung. It has been passed down through the ages at great risk to the bearers of this text so that one day this message could come to you. It is a spiritual map that will guide you back to our original state of being.”

Suna stood at the front of the auditorium, the hem of her ivory dress brushing the ground as she walked across the stage. “I will introduce this text so that you may experience it for yourself. After all, experience is the best teacher.” She smiled. “But before I share it with you, I would like to start with an exercise so that you may practice opening your senses to fully perceive the essence of the ChunBuKyung.”

She raised the brass bell between her fingertips and rang it once.

“Close your eyes and listen to the sound of the bell with your ears.”

Noah closed his eyes. The tinkle of the bell was

high and soft.

“Now practice feeling the vibration of the sound in your body.” She rang it again.

Noah felt a small sensation in his body. The high ting of the bell stimulated his nerve endings, which caused the hairs along the surface of his body to rise.

“Now that you have distinguished the difference

between listening with your ears versus perceiving with your whole body, I will chant the ChunBuKyung once for you. The vibrational essence of each sound will be absorbed into your body, which will allow your body to recover its memory of origin on a cellular level. You don’t have to do anything, you just have to bring your awareness to the present and the energetic resonance will recalibrate you to a pure state of being. It only takes a split second of presence for your soul to open completely.”

Suna nodded her head to the sound engineer who raised the volume on a tribal music track. The melodic beat of the drum echoed through the room. Suna began to chant, softly at first, raising the intensity of her voice with every character uttered,

“Il. Shi. Mu. Shi. Il. Suk. Sahm. Geuk. Mu. Jin. Bohn.

Chun. Il. Il. Ji. Il. Yi. In. Il. Sahm.

Il. Juk. Ship. Guh. Mu. Gwe. Hwa. Sahm.

Chun. Yi. Sahm. Ji. Yi. Sahm. In. Yi. Sahm.

Dae. Sahm. Hap. Yook. Saeng. Chil. Pahl. Gu. Woon.

Sahm. Sah. Sung. Hwan. Oh. Chil. Il.

Myo. Yun. Mahn. Wang. Mahn. Rhae.

Yong. Byun. Bu. Dong. Bohn.

Bohn. Shim. Bohn. Tae. Yahng. Ahng. Myung.

In. Joong. Chun. Ji. Il. Il. Jong. Mu. Jong. Il.”

Noah closed his eyes and allowed his body to absorb the rhythm of the drum and the energy that the chanted words pulled from the ether and channeled into the room.

He experienced something that he wouldn’t be able to explain, even if he tried. A holy fire emerged from deep within. His soul expanded, like a golden dragon rising from a thousand-year suppression to spread its wings majestically through his limbs. It relived each moment of his life, every breath he had taken, every drop of sweat, every tension, every love gained and lost.

In this moment, he was known.

“God?” he breathed, attempting to identify this glorious light.

“Yes.” Suna’s voice echoed through his head, communicated impossibly without words.

He opened his eyes and met her gaze, which had been intently fixed on him without faltering. She nodded her head, a glimmer of moisture sparkling in her eyes. He knew, that she knew, that something important had just happened for him.