We walked outside, and I noticed a brown, hardtop Jeep, perhaps ten years old, sitting beside the road. As we walked closer, I could tell it was filled with ice chests, boxes of dried food, sleeping bags, and heavier jackets. Several external gas tanks were strapped to the rear.
“Where did all this stuff come from?” I asked.
He winked at me. “We have been preparing for this journey for a long time.”
From Lama Rigden’s monastery, Yin headed north for a few miles and then turned the Jeep from the wide gravel road onto a narrow tract, barely wider than a foot path. We continued driving for several miles without saying anything.
The truth was, I didn’t know what to say. I had agreed to go on this journey purely because of the Lama’s words and because of what Wil had done for me in the past, but now the angst over the decision was beginning to set in. I tried to shake off the fear and to retrace in my mind all that Lama Rigden had told me. What did he mean by mastering the force of my expectations?
I looked over at Yin. He was staring intently at the road.
“Where are we heading?” I asked.
Without looking at me, he said, “This is a shortcut to the Friendship Highway. We must go southwest to Tingri, near Mount Everest. The drive will take most of the day. We will also be going up in altitude.”
“Is that area safe?”
Yin glanced at me. “We will be very careful. We’re going to find Mr. Hanh.”
“Who is he?”
“He knows the most about the First Extension of prayer-energy you must learn. He is from Thailand, and he is very educated.”
I shook my head and looked away. “I’m not sure I understand these extensions. What are they?”
“You know that you have an energy field, correct? A prayer-field flowing out from you all the time.”
“Yes.”
“And you know that this field has an effect on the world, on what happens? You know it can be either small and weak or extensive and strong.”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“Well, there are precise ways to extend and expand your field so that you can become more creative and powerful. The legends say that eventually all humans will know how to do this. But you must do it now if you expect to get to Shambhala and find Wil.”
“Can you already perform these extensions?” I asked.
Yin frowned. “I did not say that.”
I just looked at him. This was great. How was I supposed to learn to do this if even Yin had trouble?
For hours we drove without talking, eating nuts and vegetables as we rode along, stopping only once at a truck stop for gas. Well after dark, we passed through Tingri.
“We must be very careful here,” Yin said. “We are near the Rongphu monastery and the Everest base camp, and there will be Chinese soldiers observing the tourists and climbers. But we will also be able to see incredible views of the north face of Everest.”
Yin made several turns until he came to an area of old wooden buildings. Beyond them was a simple mud-brick house.
The yard around Hanh’s dwelling was immaculate, with carefully planted beds and rock gardens. As we drove up, a large man in a colorful, hand-embroidered robe walked out on the stoop. He appeared to be in his sixties, but he moved like a person much younger. His head was completely shaved.
Yin waved as the man strained to see who it was. When he recognized Yin, he burst into a smile and walked toward us as we got out of the Jeep.
The two men spoke for a moment in Tibetan, then Yin pointed to me and said, “This is my American friend.”
I told Hanh my name, and he bowed slightly and grasped my hand.
“Welcome,” he said. “Please come in.”
As Hanh walked back to the house, Yin reached inside the Jeep and grabbed his pack. “Bring your satchel,” he said.
The house inside was modest but filled with colorful Tibetan paintings and rugs. We went into a small sitting area, and from where I was I could see most of the other rooms. To the left was a small kitchen and a bedroom, and to the right was another room that had the look of a treatment area of some kind. In the center of the room was a massage or examination table, and lining one wall were cabinets and a small sink.
Yin said something else to Hanh in Tibetan, and I heard him repeat my name. Hanh leaned forward with a new alertness. He glanced over at me and took a large breath.
“You are very fearful,” Hanh said, looking me over closely.
“No kidding,” I replied.
Hanh chuckled at my sarcasm. “We must do something about that if you are going to complete your journey.”
He walked around me, surveying my body.
“Those in Shambhala,” he began, “live differently from most other humans. They always have. In fact, through the millennia, there has been a great gulf between the energy levels of most people and those in Shambhala. Yet in recent times, as all humans have evolved and increased their consciousness, this distance has closed, but it is still very far apart.”
As Hanh was talking, I glanced at Yin. He seemed to be as nervous as I was.
Hanh picked up on it too. “Yin is as fearful as you are,” he said. “But he knows that this fear can be handled. I don’t think you realize that yet. You must begin to act and think as those in Shambhala do. You must first cultivate and then stabilize your energy.”
Hanh stopped and concentrated on looking at my body again, then smiled.
“You have had many experiences,” he said. “You should be stronger.”
“Maybe I don’t understand energy well enough,” I replied.
“Oh no, you understand.” Hanh smiled broadly. “You just don’t want to change the way you live. You want to get excited about the ideas and then live unconsciously, more or less the way you’ve always done.”
This conversation was not going the way I wanted, and my fear was being replaced by a mild irritation.
As I stood there, Hanh walked around me several more times, still gazing intently up and down my body.
“What are you looking at?” I asked.
“When I am assessing someone’s energy level, I first look at posture,” Hanh said matter-of-factly. “Yours is not too bad at this point, but you had to work on it, didn’t you?”
His question was very perceptive. As a youth, I grew very quickly one year and as a result slumped terribly. My back was always tired and ached, and it only improved when I began to practice a few basic yoga positions every morning.
“The energy still doesn’t flow up your body very well,” Hanh added.
“You can tell that by looking at me?” I responded.
“And by feeling you. The amount and strength of your energy feels like the degree of presence you have in the room. Surely you must have experienced someone who came into a room and had presence or charisma.”
“Sure, of course.” I thought again about the man at the hotel pool in Kathmandu.
“The more energy one has, the more others feel that person’s presence. Often this is energy that winds up being displayed through the ego, and so feels strong at first, then dissipates very rapidly. But with others, this is a genuine and constant energy that remains reliable.”
I nodded.
“One thing in your favor is that you are open,” Hanh continued. “You have experienced a mystical opening, a sudden inflow of divine energy, sometime in the past, have you not?”
“Yes,” I said, remembering my experience on the mountain-top in Peru. Even now it remained vivid in my memory. I had been at the end of my rope, certain I was about to be killed by Peruvian soldiers, when all of a sudden I was imbued with an unusual calm, euphoria, and lightness. It was the first time I had experienced what the mystics of various religions have called a transformative state.
“How did the energy fill you?” Hanh asked. “How did it happen exactly?”
“It was a rush of peacefulness, and all my fear went away.”
“How did it move?”
That was a question I had never thought about, but I quickly began to remember. “It seemed to come up my spine and out through the top of my head, lifting my body upward. I felt as if I was floating. As though there was a string pulling me upward from the top of my head.”
Hanh nodded approvingly, then caught my eye. “And how long did it last?”
“Not long,” I replied. “But I have learned how to breathe in the beauty around me in order to rekindle the feeling.”
“What is missing in your practice,” said Hanh, “is breathing in the energy and then consciously maintaining it at a higher level. This is the first extension that you must make. You must keep your energy flowing in more fully. This must be done in a precise manner, taking care that your other actions do not erode your energy field once you have built it up.”
He paused for a moment. “Do you understand? The rest of your life must support your higher energy. You must be congruent.” He glanced at me mischievously. “You must live wisely. Let’s eat.”
He disappeared into the kitchen, and returned with a platter of vegetables, accompanied by a sauce of some kind. He ushered both Yin and me over to a table and served the vegetables in three small bowls. It soon became clear that the food was all part of the information Hanh was imparting.
As we ate, he continued. “Maintaining higher energy within oneself is impossible if one consumes dead matter as food.”
I looked away, turning off. If this was going to be a lecture on diet, I would just as soon skip it.
My attitude seemed to infuriate Hanh.
“Are you crazy?” he almost shouted. “Your very survival may depend on this information and you won’t put yourself out a little bit to learn this. What do you think? That you can live any way you want and still do important things?”
He became quiet and glanced sideways at me. I realized that the anger was genuine but was also part of his act. I got the impression that he was giving information to me on more than one level. As I looked back at him, I couldn’t help smiling. Hanh was eminently likable.
He patted my shoulder and smiled back at me.
“Most people,” he continued, “are full of energy and enthusiasm in their youth, but then during middle age they lapse into a slow, downhill slide that they pretend not to notice. After all, their friends are slowing down and their kids are active, so they spend more and more time sitting around and eating the foods that taste good.
“Before long, they begin to have nagging complaints and chronic problems such as digestive difficulties or skin irritations that they write off as just age, and then one day they get a serious illness that won’t go away. Usually they go to a doctor who does not stress prevention and they begin to take drugs, and sometimes the problem is helped and sometimes it isn’t. And then, as the years fly by, they get some disease that progressively gets worse, and they realize they are dying. Their only solace is that they think what is happening occurs to everyone—that it is inevitable.
“The terrible thing is that this collapse of energy happens to some extent even to people who otherwise intend to be spiritual.” He leaned over toward me and feigned looking around the room to see if someone was listening. “This includes some of our most respected lamas.”
I wanted to laugh but I dared not.
“If we seek higher energy and at the same time consume foods that rob us of this energy,” Hanh continued, “we get nowhere. We must assess all the energies we routinely allow into our own energy fields, especially foods, and avoid all but the best if our fields are to stay strong.”
He leaned closer to me again. “This is very difficult for most people because we are all addicted to the foods we currently eat, and most are horribly poisonous.”
I looked away.
“I know there is much conflicting information out there about food,” he went on. “But the truth is out there too. Each of us must do the research, make ourselves see the larger picture. We are spiritual beings who come into this world to raise our energy. Yet much of what we find here is designed purely for sensual pleasure and distraction, and much of it saps our energy and pulls us toward physical disintegration. If we really believe we are energetic beings, we must follow a narrow path through these temptations.
“If you look all the way back at evolution, you see that from the beginning we had to experiment with food purely by trial and error, just to figure out which foods were good for us and which would kill us. Eat this plant, survive; eat that one over there, die. At this point in history we’ve figured out what kills us, but we’re only now realizing which foods add to our ultimate longevity and keep our energy high, and which ones ultimately wear us down.”
He paused for a moment as if determining whether I was understanding.
“In Shambhala they see this larger picture,” he continued. “They know who we are as human beings. We look like we are material stuff, flesh and blood, but we are atoms! Pure energy! Your science has proved this fact. When we look deeper into atoms, we first see particles, and then, at deeper levels, the particles themselves disappear into patterns of pure energy, vibrating at a certain level. And if we look at the way we eat from this perspective, we see that what we put in our bodies as food affects our vibrational state. Certain foods increase our energy and vibration and others diminish it. The truth is as simple as that.
“All disease is the result of a drop in vibrational energy, and when our energy drops to a certain point, there are natural forces in the world that are designed to disincorporate our bodies.”
He looked at me as though he had said something very profound.
“Do you mean physically disincorporate?” I asked.
“Yes. Look again at the larger picture. When anything dies—a dog hit by a car, or a person after a long illness—the cells of the body immediately lose their vibration and become very acid in chemistry. That acid state is the signal to the microbes of the world, the viruses, bacteria, and fungi, that it is time to decompose this dead tissue. This is their job in the physical universe. To return a body back to the earth.
“I said earlier,” he went on, “that when our bodies drop in energy because of the kinds of foods we are eating, it makes us susceptible to disease. Here’s how that works. When we eat foods, they are metabolized and leave a waste or ash in our bodies. This ash is either acidic in nature or alkaline, depending on the food. If it is alkaline, then it can be quickly extracted from our bodies with little energy. However, if these waste products are acid, they are very hard for the blood and lymph system to eliminate and they are stored in our organs and tissues as solids—low vibrational crystalline forms that create blocks or disruptions in the vibratory levels of our cells. The more such acid by-products are stored, the more generally acid these tissues become, and guess what?”
He looked at me dramatically again. “A microbe of one type or another appears and senses all this acid and says, ‘Oh, this body is ready to be decomposed.’
“Do you get that? When any organism dies, its body quickly changes to a highly acid environment and is consumed by microbes very quickly. If we begin to resemble this very acid, or death state, then we begin to come under attack from microbes. All human diseases are the result of such an attack.”
What Hanh was saying made perfect sense. A long time ago, I had run across some information about body pH on the Internet. Moreover, I seemed to know it intuitively.
“You’re telling me that what we eat directly sets us up for disease?” I asked.
“Yes, the wrong foods can lower our vibrational level to the point that the forces of nature begin to return our bodies to the earth.”
“What about diseases that aren’t caused by microbes?”
“All disease comes about through microbial action. Your own research in the West is showing that. Various microbes have been found to be associated with the arterial lesions of heart disease, as well as the production of tumors in cancer. But remember, the microbes are just doing what they do. Diets that create the acidic environment are the true cause.”
He paused and then said, “Grasp this fully. We humans are either in an alkaline, high energy state or we are in an acid state, which signals the microbes living within us, or that come by, that we are ready to decompose. Disease is literally a rotting of some part of our bodies because the microbes around us have been given the signal that we are already dead.”
He looked at me mischievously again.
“Sorry to be so blunt,” he said. “But we don’t have much time. The food we eat determines almost entirely which of these two conditions we are in. Generally, foods that leave acid wastes in our body are heavy, overcooked, overprocessed, and sweet, such as meats, flours, pastries, alcohol, coffee, and the sweeter fruits. Alkaline foods are greener, fresher, and more alive, such as fresh vegetables and their juices, leafy greens, sprouts, and fruits like avocado, tomato, grapefruit, and lemons. It could not be more simple. We are spiritual beings in an energetic, spiritual world. Those of you in the West might have grown up thinking that cooked meat and processed foods are good for us. But we know now that they create an environment of slow disincorporation that takes its toll on us over time.
“All the debilitating illnesses that plague mankind—arteriosclerosis, stroke, arthritis, AIDS, and especially cancers—exist because we pollute our bodies, which signals the microbes inside that we are ready to break down, deenergize, die. We always wondered why some people exposed to the same microbes don’t get a particular disease. The difference is the inner-body environment. The good news is that even if we have too much acidity in our bodies and begin to decompose, the situation can be reversed if we improve our nutrition and move to an alkaline, higher energy state.”
He was now waving both arms, his eyes wide, still twinkling.
“We are living in the dark ages when it comes to the principles of a vibrant, high-energy body. Human beings are supposed to live more than a hundred and fifty years. But we eat in a way that immediately begins to destroy us. Everywhere, we see people who are disincorporating before our eyes. But it doesn’t have to be that way.”
He paused and took a breath. “It’s not that way in Shambhala.”
After another moment Hanh began to walk around, looking me over one more time.
“So, there you have it,” he concluded. “The legends say that humans will first learn the true nature of foods and what kinds to consume. Then, the legends say, we can fully open up to the inner sources of energy that increase our vibration even more.”
He slid his chair back from the table and looked at me. “You are handling the altitude very well here in Tibet, but I would like for you to rest.”
“That would be nice,” I said. “I’m bushed.”
“Yes,” Yin agreed, “we have had a long day.”
“Make sure you expect a dream,” Hanh added, leading me toward a bedroom.
“Expect a dream?”
Hanh turned. “Yes, you are more powerful than you think.”
I laughed.
I woke up suddenly and looked out the window. The sun was well up in the sky. No dream. I put on my shoes and walked into the other room.
Hanh and Yin were sitting at the table, talking.
“How did you sleep?” Hanh asked.
“Okay,” I said, slumping down in one of the chairs. “But I can’t remember dreaming.”
“That’s because you don’t have enough energy,” he said, half-distracted. He was staring intensely at my body again. I realized he was focused on the way I was sitting.
“What are you looking at?” I asked.
“Is this the way you wake up in the morning?” Hanh inquired.
I stood up. “What’s wrong?”
“After sleep, one must wake up one’s body and begin to accept the energy before one does anything else.” He was standing with his legs far apart and his hands on his hips. As I watched, he slid his feet together and lifted his arms. His body rose up in one motion until he was standing on his tiptoes with his palms pressed together directly over his head.
I blinked. There was something unusual about the way his body moved, and I couldn’t focus on it exactly. He seemed to float upward rather than use his muscles. When I could focus again, he was beaming a broad smile. Just as quickly, his body moved from there into a graceful walk toward me. I blinked again.
“Most people wake up slowly,” Hanh said, “and slouch around and get themselves going with a cup of coffee or tea. They go to a job in which they continue to slouch around or use just one particular set of muscles. Patterns set in, and as I said, blocks develop in the way energy flows through our bodies.
“You must make sure your body is open everywhere in order to receive all the energy that is available. You do this by moving every muscle, every morning, from your center.” He pointed to a place just below his navel. “If you concentrate on moving from this area, then your muscles will be free to operate at their highest level of coordination. It is the central principle of all the martial arts and dance disciplines. You can even invent your own movements.”
With this comment, he launched into a multitude of movements I had never seen before. It appeared to be something like the shifts of weight and the twirling that one sees in tai chi. He was definitely performing an expansion of these classical movements.
“Your body,” he added, “will know how to move in order to help loosen your individual blocks.”
He stood on one leg and leaned over and swung his arm as if he were pitching a softball underhanded, only his hand almost touched the floor as he made the movement. Then he spun around in place on the opposite leg. I never saw his weight shift, and again he seemed to be floating.
I shook my head and tried to focus, but he had stopped in place, as if a photographer had frozen his movements in a snapshot, which appeared impossible. Just as suddenly he was walking toward me again.
“How do you do this?” I asked.
He said, “I began slowly and remembered the basic principle. If you move from your center and expect the energy to flow into you, you will move in a lighter and lighter manner. Of course, to perfect this you must be able to open up to all the divine energy that is available within.”
He stopped and looked at me. “How well do you remember your mystical opening?”
I thought again about Peru and my experience on the mountaintop.
“Fairly well, I think.”
“This is good,” he said. “Let’s go outside.”
Yin smiled as he got up, and we followed Hanh out into a small garden and up some steps into an area of sparse brown grass and large, jagged boulders. The rocks had attractive streaks of reds and browns running through them. For ten minutes Hanh led me through some of the movements I had seen earlier, then offered me a place to sit down on the ground, taking a seat to my right. Yin sat down behind us. The morning sun bathed the mountains in the distance in a warm yellow light. I was struck by their beauty.
“The legends say,” Hanh began, “that opening up to a higher energy state is an ability that all humans will eventually acquire. It will begin as a general knowledge that such an awareness is possible. Then we will move to an understanding of all the factors involved in cultivating and maintaining higher levels of energy.”
He paused and looked at me. “You already know the basic procedure, but your senses must be expanded. The legends say that first you calm yourself and look out on your surroundings. Most of us seldom look closely at the things around us. It’s just stuff that takes a backseat to whatever is on our minds to get done. But we must remember that everything in the universe is alive with spiritual energy and is a part of God. We must intentionally ask to connect with the divine inside us.
“As you know, the measure as to whether we are connecting with this energy is our sense of beauty. Always ask yourself this question: How beautiful does everything look? No matter how it appears at first we can always see more beauty in it if we try. The degree of beauty we can see measures how much divine energy we are receiving within us.”
Hanh went on to have me spend some time looking, really looking, at everything around me.
“Once we begin to establish our connection,” he said, “and experience the divine energy within, everything begins to have more presence in our perception. Things stand out and we notice their unique shape and color. When this perception occurs, we can breathe in even more energy.
“You see, in reality, the energy doesn’t come so much from the things around us—although we can absorb energy directly from some plants and sacred sites. Sacred energy comes from our connection to the divine inside us. Everything around us, both natural and man-made—flowers, rocks, grass, mountains, art—is already majestically beautiful and present beyond anything most humans can perceive. All we do, when we open up to the divine, is raise our energy vibration and thus our perceptual ability so we can view the world the way it already is. Do you understand? Humans already live in a world of immense beauty and color and form. Heaven itself is right here. We just haven’t opened up to enough inner energy to see it.”
I listened with fascination. This was clearer now than ever before.
“Focus on the beauty,” Hanh instructed, “and begin to breathe in the energy within you.”
I took a deep breath.
“Now look for increases in the beauty as you breathe,” Hanh instructed.
I gazed out again at the rocks and mountains, and to my amazement I noticed that the tallest of the ridges in the distance was Mount Everest. For some reason, I hadn’t recognized its shape before.
“Yes, yes, look at Everest,” Hanh said.
As I gazed out at the mountain, I noticed that the snow-rippled ridges on its face seemed to make little steps up toward the crown-shaped peak. The sight jolted my perception outward, and the world’s tallest mountain instantly seemed closer, somehow part of me, as if I might be able to reach out and touch it.
“Keep breathing,” Hanh said. “Your vibration and ability to perceive will increase even more. Everything will become shiny, as though illuminated from within.”
I took another breath and I began to feel lighter and my back straightened with little effort. Unbelievably I felt exactly as I had during the mountain experience in Peru.
Hanh was nodding. “Your ability to perceive beauty is the primary measure that divine energy is coming into you. But there are other measures as well.
“You will feel lighter,” Hanh continued. “The energy will rise up through you and lift you up, as you said, like a string pulling you up from the top of your head. And you will feel a greater wisdom about who you are and what you are doing. You will receive intuitions and dreams about what is next on your life path.”
He paused and looked at my body. I was now sitting up effortlessly. “Now we come to the most important part,” he said. “You must learn to sustain this energy, to keep it flowing into you. You must use the power of your expectations here, the power of your prayer-energy.”
Here was this word again: expectation. I had never heard it used in this context before.
“How do I do that?” I asked, feeling confused, my body dropping in energy, the forms and colors around me fading.
Hanh’s eyes got large and he burst into laughter. He tried several times to stop but finally rolled on the ground in uncontrollable mirth. He regained his composure several times but began laughing again every time he looked at me. I even heard Yin snickering in the background.
Finally Hanh managed to take some breaths and calm down.
“I’m very sorry,” he said. “It’s just that your expression was so funny. You really don’t believe you have any power at all, do you?”
“It’s not that,” I protested. “I just don’t know what you meant by expectation.”
Hanh was still smiling. “You do think you carry around certain expectations about life, don’t you? You expect the sun to rise. You expect your blood to circulate.”
“Of course.”
“Well, I’m only asking that you try to become conscious of these expectations. It is the only way to maintain and extend the higher level of energy that you just experienced. You must learn to expect that level of energy in your life, and you must do so very deliberately and consciously. This is the only way to complete the first prayer extension. Would you like to try again?”
I smiled back at him, and we spent several minutes breathing and building up the energy. When I was seeing the higher level of beauty I had experienced before, I nodded at him.
“Now,” he said, “you must expect this energy that is filling you to keep filling you and to flow out of you in every direction. Visualize this happening.”
I tried to hold on to my energy level as I asked, “This outflow—how do I know this is really happening?”
“You will be able to feel it. Just visualize it for now.”
I took another breath and visualized the energy coming into me and flowing out in every direction into the world.
“I still don’t know whether it’s really happening,” I said.
Hanh looked directly at me, appearing slightly impatient. “You know the energy is flowing out of you because the energy is maintained, the colors and shapes stay high, and you feel it as it fills you, then overflows outward.”
“How does it feel?” I asked.
He looked at me with incredulity. “You know the answer to that.”
I gazed out at the mountains again, visualizing the energy flow going out of me toward them. They remained beautiful and began to be immensely attractive as well. Then a rush of deep emotion filled me, and I remembered what I had experienced in Peru.
Hanh was nodding.
“Of course!” I said. “The measure of whether the energy is flowing out is the feeling of love.”
Hanh smiled broadly. “Yes, it is a love that becomes a background emotion that stays with you as long as your prayer-energy is going out into the world. You must stay in a state of love.”
“This seems awfully idealistic for ordinary human beings,” I said.
Hanh chuckled. “I’m not telling you how to be an ordinary human being. I’m telling you how to be at the edge of evolution. I’m telling you how to be a hero. Just remember that you must expect divine energy to come into you at a higher level and to flow out of you like a cup running over. When you get disconnected, remember this feeling of love. Try to consciously rekindle the state.”
His eyes twinkled again. “Your expectation is the key to whether you can maintain this experience. You must visualize it happening, believe that it will be there for you in all situations. This expectation must be cultivated and consciously affirmed every day.”
I nodded.
“Now,” he said, “do you understand all the procedures I have told you about?”
Before I could answer, he said, “The key is how you wake up in the morning. That is why I asked you to sleep, so that I could see how you wake up. You must do so with discipline. Wake your body up to the inflow of energy in the manner that I showed you. Move from your center, feel the energy immediately. Expect it immediately.
“Eat only the foods that are still alive, and after a while, inner divine energy will be easier to breathe into your being. Take the time to fill up with energy every day and wake up with movement. Remember the measures. Visualize that this energy is coming into you and feel it as if flows out into the world. Do this and you will have completed the First Extension. You will be able not just to experience energy occasionally, but to cultivate it and maintain it at a higher level.”
He bowed low and without saying anything else walked back toward the house. Yin and I followed. When we arrived, Hanh began selecting food and placing it in a large basket.
“What about the gateway?” I asked Hanh.
He stopped and looked at me. “There are many gateways.”
“I mean, do you know where we can find the gateway to Shambhala?”
He looked at me sternly. “You have only completed one extension of your prayer-energy. You now must learn what to do with this energy that is flowing out of you. And you are very headstrong, and still prone to fear and anger. You will have to overcome these tendencies before you can get anywhere near Shambhala.”
With that statement, Hanh nodded at Yin and handed him the basket, then walked into the other room.