SPECIAL REPORT GONG-FU! · 2010. 2. 22. · systems of personal development through spiritual...

SPECIAL REPORT

GONG-FU!

How to Explode Your Results in 2010 by Making One Critical Shift

By Dr. Symeon Rodger

© 2010 Rock Solid Life Systems and Warrior Coaching International

You are welcome to further disseminate this Special Report without further permission, so long as you do so free of charge and without

altering the content in any way.

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© 2010 www.WarrriorCoachingInternational.com

MEET DR. SYMEON RODGER...

Dr. Symeon Rodger, “The Warrior Coach”, is arguably the world’s top expert in the ancient world’s amazing systems of personal development through spiritual practice, health maintenance and martial arts. Combining his vast knowledge of these ancient systems with modern science and rigorous attention to historical fact, Symeon specializes in creating liberating and life-transforming paradigm shifts in audiences of all kinds. Symeon has distilled his 35 years of research and experience into his new book, The 5 Pillars of Life: Reclaiming Ownership of Your Mind, Body and Future. He is an internationally known author on mindset and co-creator of several multi-media programs in the field, including The Life Mastery Program and The Mindset Masters Speak. He has done extensive work on corporate culture (the collective aspect of mindset) and is author of Convergence Power: Turning Your Corporate Culture into a Purpose-Driven Benefit Machine that Runs Itself Without You and Leaves Your Competition in the Dust.

Symeon is the founder of Rock Solid Life Systems and Warrior Coaching International, companies dedicated to researching all levels of human potential. He is a university professor, a martial arts expert and used to run Top Secret intelligence operations for the Canadian government. He is also a married priest in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

He has had his own radio show and been a guest on many others, being interviewed on the same programs as world famous authors such as Dr. M. Scott Peck. As founder of the phenomenally successful Mindset Mastery Virtual Bootcamp, an ongoing teleseminar series on various aspects of mindset and peak performance, he has interviewed such notables as T. Harv Eker, Chris and Janet Attwood, Dr. Alex Loyd, Mark Joyner, Cynthia Kersey, Loral Langemeier, Jack Zufelt and others.

http://www.WarrriorCoachingInternational.com

http://www.mindsetbootcamp.com/

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Dr. Symeon Rodger was a wonderful surprise as a speaker. We felt compelled to have him on our Quantum Clearing series, but we really didn’t know why. It was just a feeling. We’d never heard him speak before.

Only 30 showed up for the show, but Symeon was amazing. He was lots of fun and brought a brand-new take on healing. I still use the breathing exercise he taught us to help keep me in an Alpha state. Others apparently liked him too - he sold 75 books to those 30 people!

Tom PauleyCEO of Rich Dreams Inc. Author of I’m Rich Beyond My

Wildest Dreams and Quantum Marketing

Dr. Symeon Rodger is one of the finest, most respected speakers and trainers I know. He is brilliant and yet very genuine. He comes from the heart and when that is combined with his knowledge he is able to bless the lives of everyone who hears him which explains why he has such a large, extremely dedicated following. He is a delight to work with and I’m very pleased to have him as one of my strategic partners.

Jack M. Zufelt “Mentor to Millions” and Author of the #1 bestselling book,

The DNA of Success, www.dnaofsuccess.com

Dr. Symeon Rodger brings a remarkable assemblage of talents, knowledge and expertise, which made for a fascinating, educational and engaging experience for our entire audience. A true professional and master communicator, Dr. Symeon delivered a powerful, content-rich presentation in a way that made it easy for our entire audience to comprehend and benefit from immediately. I would highly recommend Dr. Symeon Rodger as an extremely

well versed speaker and exceptional adult educator, and his kind, charismatic personality made him a complete joy to work with.

Kathy M. GyimesyProgram Director, The Health Intensives Inc.

I truly enjoy listening to Dr. Symeon Rodger. Many of you may know him from an interview that Mark Joyner did with Symeon in December 2006. Mark is not an easy interviewer and he takes his guests to task if they are not real masters of their discipline. It was on that teleseminar that Symeon was able to shine a light of profound wisdom from his decades of learning and mastering martial arts skills and, far more important, his complete understanding of how to teach a complex subject (HARA) in a very simple and straightforward manner. He teaches

a system that is complete, authentic, proven, and reliable; all in a step by step method that is certain to work for anyone that chooses a path of higher consciousness. Listen, learn and take action, now!

Irwin Glenn Business Strategist, New York

Symeon Rodger is a scintillating and controversial speaker!

Mark JoynerMarketing legend and #1 Best-Selling Author of Simpleology

What His Colleagues and Clients Have to Say About Dr. Symeon Rodger...


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FROM THE DESk OF DR. SYMEON RODGER:

January 6, 2010

The beginning of a new year is always a time of great promise, of hopes and dreams, a time to imagine what life could be like and plan how you’ll get to that alluring destination.

Realistically, of course, we all know that most New Year’s resolutions barely sur-vive the month of January!

My personal quest of more than 35 years now has been to find ways of reversing that distressing trend. As a speaker, author and mentor, I’ve spent an enormous amount of time investigating and testing ancient and modern methods that claim to be able to transform your life, and then telling people like you about them.

This special report is different, though. It’s not about any particular “method” that will double your income or cut your waistline in half. It’s about something much more profound.

It’s about two radically different approaches to transforming human life and why the one you’re subconsciously following is quite likely the one that never works!

This special report is about the TRUTH… the truth about why it often seems so insanely difficult to make even small improvements in our lives… and how to reverse that situation.

I hope you enjoy it. Even more, I hope you take it to heart!

Best wishes for a wonderful year!

Dr. Symeon Rodger


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THE SpARTAN FACTOR

Ever had a day when you just wanted to throw in the towel?

I still have vivid memories of one such day several years ago… I’d just finished a particularly difficult counseling session with a client – let’s call her Jennie. This was our fourth or fifth session together, as I recall.

Jennie was 30-ish, very bright, talented in many ways and quite attractive. However, she had come to me with some significant emotional issues related to self-image and forgiveness that were playing havoc with her relationships and her health.

As usual, I developed a strategy to help her take on these problems, a “one step at a time” strategy that, I felt, was well within her capabilities. And each time Jennie came back I would naturally ask her how things were going.

“Well, I really haven’t had a minute to start putting your suggestions into action. I’ve just been so busy,” she would say. Meanwhile, the walls of her little world seemed to be closing in around her, and yet there was always an excuse for doing little or nothing about it.

Because of my own inexperience at the time, my first reaction was to blame myself. Maybe my strategies were unworkable or too difficult…

I knew that some people have so much invested in their own life’s calamities and illnesses that they subconsciously don’t want to get better. Yet I felt that Jennie wasn’t one of these people.

Only later, with the sage advice of a more experienced colleague did I real-ize what was really happening. Jennie was, in a certain sense, not capable of changing her life. She had lots of problems and yet no “personal power” to fix them, no matter what strategies anyone would give her.

Observation eventually clarifies many things, like the difference between the few - who run to put into action whatever you suggest, and who naturally get


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amazing results – and the many who do nothing and get nowhere. Strategy has comparatively little to do with it.

History can teach you an awful lot of things. I’m stunned to encounter people who think history’s just a bunch of dry facts from an irrelevant past.

My youngest daughter recently talked me into watching the movie 300 – an admittedly Hollywood-ized retelling of the Battle of Thermopy-lae in 480 BC.

Basically, 300 Spartan warriors held off an invading Persian army of more than one million men for a pe-

riod of several critical days before finally succumbing. It’s considered by many historians as the greatest “last stand” in military history.

Sparta was certainly a warrior culture by any definition, and those blind to its many virtues are quick to condemn it as “militaristic” or “violent”. In reality, whatever its flaws, Sparta was based on high ideals of honor and justice. The Greek historian Xenophon writes about an incident he witnessed personally:

An elderly man was trying to find a place to sit and observe the Olym-pic Games. As he went to each section, all the other Greeks laughed as he tried to make his way through. Some ignored him. Upon entering the Spartan section all the Spartans stood and offered the elderly man their seats. Suddenly the entire stadium applauded. All the Greeks knew what was the right thing to do, but the Spartans were the only ones who did it.

Sparta was widely known for its educational system for both boys and girls. The system was very demanding physically and produced people who were ex-ceptionally tough and resilient in every way.

The purpose of this toughness and resilience, though, was to inculcate a strong sense of self-identity, values and a virtuous character, as Xenophon’s story illustrates.


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Without a strong sense of who you are, of what you stand for and the inner strength to act on those values, you have no real chance of achieving real happiness or a fulfilling life.

There’s a reason why the words describing “virtue” in so many languages con-vey a sense of wholeness, stability and integration, while the words describing vice give you the impression of someone who’s like a rickety old building on the verge of collapse!

People today want to get clear on what they really want and how to get it. Un-fortunately, they don’t even know who they are and what they stand for. They have the order of things mixed up.

Tremendous clarity ensues when a person sets out to develop toughness, re-silience, a strong sense of identity and values in a systematic way. Everything becomes crystal clear and most of life’s “problems” evaporate on their own.

The Spartans were trained from childhood to be strong and resilient. All their human capacities had been tested to the limit. Their education let them taste victory in so many hair-raising situations that they were incapable of doubting their own abilities. Jennie’s peers and educators, on the other hand, had systematically trained her to feel weak, powerless and victimized. And she turned out just the way you would expect.

Unfortunately, in our society, Jennie is perfectly “normal”…


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DOES EvERY “pROblEM” REAllY NEED ITS OWN SOlUTION?

The Self-Help / Personal Development “genre” started out as an effort to pro-vide information to help you overcome specific difficulties in your life. And most of the literature in the Self-Help field still deals with single issues, like weight loss, relationships, fitness, etc. In other words, most Self-Help methods come across as “one-trick ponies”.

However, more and more people are becoming fed up with trying to deal with the endless array of unpleasant symptoms in their lives on a one-by-one basis. They’re tired of putting out fires. People are asking, “Isn’t there a more comprehensive solution? Isn’t there an single approach I can use that will solve all my problems?”

This is a natural question because most people face a bewildering matrix of problems in their own lives. They’re aware of them. They would like to do some-thing about them. But the whole prospect seems totally overwhelming.

The diagram on the Page 11 pretty well sums it up. One look at that would paralyze almost anyone!

Lately you may have begun to notice the term self-mastery more and more often. That’s an indication of how deeply felt the need for a single, all-encom-passing solution really is.

You can’t underestimate the importance of this trend because it reveals a fundamental shift in consciousness about how we think about ourselves, our world and the challenges we face. We’ve come to the point of realizing that logically, there must be an approach to life that would “vaporize” our symp-toms without any need for us to address them all.

Fortunately, there is such an approach. And the trail of bread crumbs that has led the Self-Help world in that direction comes from several sources…

More and more people are

becoming fed up with trying to deal with the endless

array of unpleasant symptoms in their lives on a one-by-

one basis


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First, we have psychology, which deals with how we think and perceive. And all psychological investigation eventually confronts one single question – the question “What is human consciousness and how do you modify it?”

Second there’s quantum physics, which has demolished the myth of the ob-jective observer by proving that the consciousness of the observer actually changes physical reality on the sub-atomic level. So again, we come face to face with the issue of consciousness.

Third, we have the field of religion and spirituality, where there is the increasing realization that holding a particular religious ideology is, in itself, powerless to transform human life, and that real transformation takes place at the level of consciousness.

So wherever we turn, we’re confronted by the overwhelming evidence that hu-man consciousness is the key to transforming both our individual lives and the world at large.

This “discovery” is nothing new – it’s simply a rediscovery and a scientific valida-tion of what ancient cultures have known for millennia.

What makes it so important here and now is that it supports the view that there must be a single approach to “fixing” all the things that are going wrong in your life.


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Really Want to Tackle Your Problems One-By-One?

Income too low

Businessgoingbadly

YOU

Job is precarious

Creditors calling

Crushed by debt

Doubtability to succeed

Inability to lose weight

Confusedabout own values

Unclear on goals

Problems with kids

Lowenergy

Feeling of approachingbreakdown

Lowimmunity

Confusedabout how to change

Confusedabout God

Feeling of spiritual emptiness

Unforeseenexpenses

Poorrelationshipwithspouse

Chronicexhaustion

Chronichealthchallenges

Poor self image

Severestress

Chronicanxiety

Out of shapephysically

Smoking Too much to do and no time

Poorrelationshipwith boss

No time for friends

Suddendemands by others

MissedopportunitiesPoor diet

Body full of toxins

Poorconcentration

Feelunloved

Grievingfor past mistakes

Grievingfor lost loved ones

REAllY WANT TO TACklE YOUR pROblEMS ONE-bY-ONE?


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THE THINGS YOU WANT TO CHANGE IN YOUR lIFE

That’s what things look like from “thirty thousand feet”, of course. When we’re down at “ground level” during our everyday lives, we have the desire and sometimes the pressing need to get better results in various areas of our lives.

In a recent study, the top 21 things to change in 2010 lined up like this:

Increase my income1. Overcome self-limiting beliefs2. Get in better physical shape3. Build excellent health and immunity4. Get clear on what I really want5. Acquire deep inner peace6. Build a stronger spiritual life7. Get more self-confidence8. Explode my existing business9.

Take back control of my energy10. Eliminate stress and anxiety11. Overcome fears12. Detoxify my body13. Network more effectively14. Take back control of my time15. Improve my diet16. Improve my relationship with my spouse or partner17. Become proficient at meditation18. Feel more loved19. Master work-life balance20. Start a successful business21.

If you analyze these further, you’ll notice that the items listed here can be grouped together on a continuum of sorts, ranging from the most concrete, material and measurable to the least concrete, material and measurable.


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So, people want to change their:

Circumstances1. (e.g., income and finances, job and career, living ac-commodations, motor vehicle, etc.)

Physical reality2. (e.g., health and immunity, fitness, etc.)

Mental and emotional reality3. (e.g., self-limiting beliefs, stress and anxiety, self-image issues, etc.)

Interpersonal reality4. (e.g., relationship with spouse, with children, with other relatives, with boss and / or colleagues, with friends, etc.)

Spiritual reality5. (e.g., meditation, prayer, inner peace, spiritual connec-tion to God / Source)

Please note that I’m not implying any value judgment here. It’s not that want-ing to make more money makes you a lesser person and wanting to become more “spiritual” makes you morally superior.

Any one person is likely to want to change things in any or all categories. A person who’s very spiritually oriented may well have a very press-ing need to make more money. And a wealthy business person may have a deep spiritual life.

Although the prevailing misconception in our culture for much of the 20th century was that only what’s concrete and measurable is “real”, that misconception is rapidly collapsing, partly under the weight of scientific advance itself.

We are now face to face with the fact that we need to establish a more holistic view of life and act on that view in order to resolve our individual problems. This is the only way that you’ll have a fighting chance to live a long, healthy and fulfilling life.

Now we’ll have a look at why getting better results in your life – in any area of your life – is turning out to be such a challenge! The universally acknowledged

We are now face to face with the fact that we need to establish a more holistic view of life

and act on that view in order to resolve our individual problems


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fact is that Self-Help / Personal Development isn’t working all that well, if the statistics are any indication. Although reliable data is hard to find, it’s widely accepted that 50-75% of the people attending any given seminar or workshop will experience zero improvement over the following 12 months, 20-45% will ex-perience minimal benefit and only 5% or less will see significant change in their lives.

Strangely enough, the evidence does NOT point the finger at the experts or their methods. Much of the Self-Help material itself is of good quality.

The evidence points instead at you and me, the “users” of the material. Here’s why…


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WHY CHANGING YOUR lIFE IS HARDER THAN YOU THOUGHT…

Based on my years of counseling, coaching, mentoring and simply observing both myself and others, I’ve compiled a list of the most common factors that appear to “cause” you to fail when you try to make changes in your life. They’re not in any particular order:

Not having a clear idea where they want to go1. Fighting symptoms instead of causes2. Lacking perseverance 3. Confused about what action to take4. Not having a mentor, teacher or coach5. Acting on bad advice6. Lack of emotional stability7. Cultural blinders that filter out the best solutions8. Having too much to do-overwhelmed by everything9. Slavery to subconscious fears, self-limiting beliefs10. Fear of effort and adversity11. Trying to change too much at once 12. Being obsessed with finding the magic bullet and the quick fix13. Failure to act - analysis paralysis14. Not having a plan of action15. Stress and anxiety16. Unwillingness to be different from the herd17. Ignorance of the rules of inner growth18. Failure to build a strong physical, emotional and noetic foundation19. Sheer force of habit20. The culture and educational system that systematically teach low 21. personal effectiveness Lack of belief that something better is possible22.


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Taken as a whole, the factors above point to the one cause that’s the true “root” of your seeming inability to make dramatic changes in your quality of life.

To understand this one key cause, we have to back up for a moment and look at history’s original Self-Help / Personal Development systems, the ancient world’s most successful traditions of spiritual life, health main-tenance and martial arts.

These are what I’ve called Authentic Ancient Tra-ditions in my book, The 5 Pillars of Life. They’re “authentic” because they’ve proven their claims to get results across cultures and over centuries. (And not everything that’s ancient is authentic – not by a long shot!)

Authentic traditions explain our problem for us like this:

Our current condition as individuals – how we see ourselves and •the world – is not “normal”. What we refer to as “normal” is actu-ally distorted, deluded and in need of healing on a deep level.

The proof comes in two parts: •First, the fact that our “normal” approach to life leads to endless o suffering, and Second, the demonstrated and proven existence of an ap-o proach that has consistently yielded vastly superior results

The healing we require is a healing of our • consciousness, our innermost being. This healing is the key to true happiness, as opposed to the pseu-do-happiness we often settle for (which is just a momentary reduction in suffering)

This healing requires gaining freedom from the ego, a distorted form of •consciousness giving rise to the false personality that has been torment-ing us and holding us prisoner


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The methods required to overthrow the ego and enter into true happi-•ness have all long since been refined and perfected. They work very well, as long as you put them into practice.

So you would think that by using methods that have been carefully refined and validated over many centuries and sometimes millennia, Authentic Ancient Tra-ditions would be having a far higher success rate in our culture than the more modern Self-Help / Personal Development methods.

Wrong. There’s no discernable difference between the two in terms of concrete results in the Western world. Authentic traditions are having just as difficult a time pro-ducing concrete results even though their methods have long since been “perfected”.

Why is this? Very simple… The problem is not the methods themselves, whether ancient or modern. The problem is the “soil” into which the methods are being “planted”…. and we’re the soil!

“TECHNIqUE” vS. “GONG-FU” THE pERENNIAl CONFlICT OF HUMAN lIFE

I’m going to lay out before you two radically different approaches to fixing your life, so please pay close attention.

The first one is what I call technique. It’s the approach you’re used to, the one taught to you by your culture since you were knee-high to a grasshopper, and the one that’s responsible for your results in life so far.

Technique includes all the methods, systems, practices and gimmicks you ap-ply in an effort to improve your results in any area of your life. Some common examples could be:

Time management methods•

Reflective listening to improve a relationship with someone•

The problem is not the methods

themselves


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Energy psychology strategies to deal with negative emotions (such as the •Emotional Freedom Technique – EFT, Be Set Free Fast – BSFF, the Sedona Method, and lots of others)Changing your diet to improve your health•

Adopting a regime of nutritional supplements•

Following a detoxification program•

Assertiveness training•

Networking strategies to build your business•

Marketing strategies to build your business•

Strategies to increase your income•

Goal-setting or any method designed to help you get clear on what you •want and map the way to get thereAdopting an exercise program•

The list is endless, but you’re beginning to get the idea.

Clarification: Technique (singular) is different from techniques (plural). The techniques or methods I’ve mentioned may be excellent in themselves, and some are, but that’s not relevant. Technique (singular) is an approach to life, a way of thinking, that looks for techniques (plural) or methods to address par-ticular “problems” which, it assumes, are outside of the self. Technique wants to improve the self’s perceived level of happiness by making it more successful or removing a source of perceived “unhappiness”, but without changing the self in any fundamental way.

Now here’s the catch…

In the past, you’ve probably heard me talk about the concept of Personal Pow-er, which I’ve defined as the measure of your ability to change any aspect of your life at will. Well, here’s the bad news:

NONE of the methods mentioned above, separately or in combination, nor any other methods, will appreciably increase your Personal Power until you aban-don the technique approach and its mentality.


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Personal Power consists of 3 particular dimensions or “markers”:

Noetic stability1. Emotional stability2. Physical stability3.

We’ll explain the exact meaning of these markers shortly. For now, you need to know that the 3 markers are interdependent and that they’re the basis for true strength, power and resilience on every level and that no amount of apply-ing various methods to your life will ever build them for you, until you abandon technique mentality.

And without that Personal Power, your ability to modify your consciousness, get better results in every area of your life and attain true happiness and fulfillment will be close to zero.

However, there is a very different approach to fixing your life, one that will get you the 3 markers, with all the amazing benefits that go with them. I call this approach GONG-FU.

Gong-Fu, sometimes transliterated Kung-Fu, is usually misunderstood as a way of fighting, as a Chinese martial art. That’s not what the term means, nor even the way it’s used in Chinese martial arts circles.

Gong-Fu can be translated simply as “skill”. Strictly speaking, you can acquire Gong-Fu in anything – cooking, dancing, playing chess… you name it. How-ever, there’s a deeper meaning I want you to grasp here, and this one’s more specific and more closely related to the way the term is used in martial arts.

Gong-Fu in this context means inner strength, power and resilience.

It signifies a state where your entire psycho-physical structure has been op-timized to a level approaching its full potential and where the resulting ener-gies are powerful, free-flowing, aligned and available for you to direct as you choose.

As a mentality, Gong-Fu is primarily interested in cultivating the innate poten-tial of the self – its inner strength, power and resilience – in order to bring about

Gong-Fu can be translated

simply as “skill”


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fundamental change within and to modify consciousness itself as a basis for achieving non-delusional happiness.

Needless to say, this builds enormous Personal Power that wipes out the vast majority of life’s “problems” all at once. And it increases innate ability so much that success in any area of life becomes nearly inevitable and comparatively “effortless”.

To help you understand why the distinction between technique and Gong-Fu is so critically important to your overall success and happiness in life, the following analogies will help.

Analogy 1: The Martial Arts in North America Today

In the martial arts here in North America, technique is by far the dominant approach: everyone is busy learning all the punching, kicking and throwing meth-ods and little else. What they are not learning is the power behind the methods, the Gong-Fu.

What happens when you learn lots of techniques but don’t learn the Gong-Fu behind them? Simple… me-diocre techniques that may look pretty… but have no guts.

This explains why some martial arts people have fair-ed poorly against street fighters and boxers – the very people they should defeat most easily.

As martial arts have been classically taught in the Far East, Gong-Fu has always taken precedence over techniques. Gong-Fu is either taught first or simultane-ously with techniques. And it’s always very clear that Gong-Fu is vastly more important, even for combat.

In the words of 31st generation Shaolin grandmaster Shi Deyang, “To practice technique without a strong body (Gong-Fu) will become a useless flailing of limbs.”1


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That’s why people learning Tai Chi the comprehensive way would spend months training a single stance or a single move before ever learning one of the com-plex Tai Chi movement forms. Without Gong-Fu, the forms have no power.

That’s also why, at the famous Shaolin temple, students immediately start learn-ing the “72 Arts” – the Gong-Fu behind the martial techniques.

So why does the technique mentality have such a hold over martial arts people here? Here’s why:

It’s 1. easier to learn techniques – it keeps the restless and impatient mind busy (which means you’ll have more customers paying to learn from you)

It looks impressive 2.

Technique3. is our cultural mentality. Our culture can easily understand learning various punching or kicking techniques. It goes in the same men-tal box as learning how to dribble a basketball. Our culture has no mental box for Gong-Fu, for mind-body methods that fundamentally transform the self, and still less for mind-body methods that result in abilities beyond the range of what’s considered “normal”.

Unfortunately for all these martial artists who are obsessed with techniques, they can neither dish out punishment, nor can they absorb it. And in real combat that’s all that counts. Everything else is irrelevant.

Analogy 2: The Hood and the bismarck

Remember the story of HMS Hood? This British bat-tlecruiser was the largest ship ever built when it was launched in 1918. In 1941 it went head to head against the German battleship Bismarck… and got blown to bits – literally.

The Bismarck and the Hood were almost exactly the same size at around 42,000 tons and they were both armed with eight 15-inch guns. The catch was this:

HMS Hood


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The Hood was a battle-CRUISER, not a battle-SHIP. Battlecruisers were built on the infamous misconception that “speed is armor”, that you can outrun anything you can’t destroy and that being fast will keep you from getting hit. In other words, the Hood had very limited armor protection.

The Bismarck was a battleship – protected by very thick armored belts. She could take a lot of punishment. Moreover, her eight 15-inch guns were newer than the Hood’s, more accurate and with better optics.

In other words, the Bismarck could both dish it out and take it much better than the Hood. It

had the “Gong-Fu” in this situation. And Hood’s ability to “run away” became irrelevant once she received the order to engage the Bismarck.

In any engagement, the side with the most Gong-Fu wins. That’s pretty much axiomatic. The Bismarck had the Gong-Fu advantage.

Analogy 3: Armored Warfare in the Middle East

Israel fought a good many armored engagements with Egypt and Syria over the years and won every one of them hands down. How?

Simple. The British and American tanks used by the Is-raelis were better protected and more heavily armed than the Soviet built T-55 and T-62 tanks used by Egypt and Syria. On the desert terrain of the Middle East, where there’s seldom any-where to hide, the powerful 105mm gun of the Israeli tanks typically outranged the Soviet tanks by nearly 500 meters. And the marginal speed advantage enjoyed by the Arab tank crews was never enough to save them from getting hit.

In Operation Desert Storm in 1991, a similar thing happened. The American M1 Abrams tank was better protected and more powerfully armed than the So-

The bismarck


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viet built T-72 used by Iraq. Whereas the M1 seemed nearly impervious to the T-72’s projectiles, the T-72s were so poorly protected that, in one case, a single shell from an M1 sliced clear through two T-72s, one after the other, destroying both.

Who had the Gong-Fu here?

Returning to the martial arts, the victor in any fight will be the one with the high-est level of Gong-Fu, even if his opponent has better technique.

You may have heard me mention that the Samurai would teach swordsmanship by sneaking up on their students and whacking them with wooden practice swords to help drive the students into a deeper level of awareness. That deeper awareness is a type of Gong-Fu. The masters would do this because they knew that Gong-Fu, not techniques, saves people in combat.

Put in its most simple terms, if your blows can devastate your enemy, while his blows can’t harm you, you will win.

If your blows can devastate your

enemy, while his blows can’t harm you, you will win


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WHAT DOES All THIS HAvE TO DO WITH MY lIFE?

By now you may be wondering what these examples from the martial arts could possibly have to do with your life. Just this – the very same approach that pro-duces Gong-Fu for the martial artist also produces the three markers of Personal Power for you.

Let’s have a look at those markers again…

Noetic stability1. – enables you to control your thoughts so that you think when you decide to think. Otherwise, your mental continuum is as calm and peaceful as the surface of a lake on a windless day. No-etic stability also allows you to stay unremittingly focused on anything you choose, no matter how busy you are with other things. Further, it allows you to gather energy throughout the day instead of wasting it.

Emotional stability2. – enables you to process the powerful emotions with-in you in such a way that these emotional currents do not a) become lodged in bodily tissues and produce the physical symptoms of stress, or b) affect your behavior or c) disturb or take over your mental continuum.

Physical stability3. – enables you to detoxify your bodily tissues and organs and surround them with a cushioning shield of energy that protects them against impact from the outside or pathogens on the inside. You op-timize your physical structure to promote optimal circulation of blood, lymph and energy, which also releases trapped emotions. You strength-en your connective tissue and develop superior strength, resilience and immunity.

You’ll notice that each of the 3 markers reinforces the other two.

So You Have a Choice…

It’s a choice you’re already making many times a day without knowing it. It’s the choice between trying to “fix your problems”, incorrectly believing your problems are outside of you, and fixing your self – the real source of the problems.


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There are only two alternatives for you. Either you choose to remain a power-less person who continues to try applying technique to this or that area of your life, hoping against hope for better results, or…

You decide once and for all to become a powerful person who gets superior results automatically, based on your Personal Power, and who gets exponen-tially greater results from any particular techniques you do apply.

THE pERENNIAl CONFlICT bETWEEN TECHNIqUE AND GONG-FU

The conflict between technique and Gong-Fu is perennial to the human condi-tion. You find it everywhere. Once your eyes are open to it, you’ll notice this yourself.

As you probably know, I’m a priest of the Orthodox Church. The conflict be-tween technique and Gong-Fu is a constant in the life of any spiritual body, Christian or otherwise.

It’s easy to hold Church services, think profound thoughts, write theological books, talk about “church growth,” and hold choir rehearsals. These are all examples of a mental-ity based on technique.

None of those activities in themselves get you any closer to the real goal of spiritual life. They’re easier. They give the impression you’re doing something meaningful. They keep lots of people busy. Unfortunately, without Personal Power, they’re also totally irrelevant.

Real spiritual progress only comes from Personal Power. And, in spiritual life, that Personal Power only comes from “Gong-Fu”, such as deliberately going without food for a set period of time (fasting), praying or meditating for long pe-riods, cutting down on sleep in order to do that, struggling with your own wrong predispositions, eliminating unnecessary physical comforts, and disciplining the mind and thoughts. These are the activities that produce the Gong-Fu of spiri-tual power (an aspect of Personal Power), and all of them are more demand-ing than the trivial, pious nonsense that people seem to automatically prefer.

Real spiritual progress only comes from

Personal Power


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The conflict between technique and Gong-Fu is everywhere around you.

There’s something you need to know: your culture and its educational system have given you a mentality that prevents you from seeing what you really need in order to totally transform your life. Consequently, almost all of the approach-es advocated in the Self-Help literature are limited to the realm of technique.

Worse still, even the few approaches that are inherently related to Gong-Fu are automatically reinterpreted by your mentality as technique.

The Personal Development / Self-Help field today is largely the story of people trying to improve some area of their lives by applying some external techniques without having acquired Gong-Fu. And that’s why the success rate is extreme-ly low.

On the other hand, the world’s Authentic Ancient Traditions, as I’ve called them in my book, The 5 Pillars of Life, put all their emphasis on Gong-Fu.

And, as The 5 Pillars of Life demonstrates, these ancient methods – all of which are still very much alive and kicking – have gotten far better results far more of-ten than any modern Self-Help method can yet claim. And the “clinical” data of centuries is there to back that up.

It’s important to realize that technique does not only mean methods that isolate the mind or the body. Even methods that are time-tested and holistic become technique when we approach them in a way that reduces them to that sta-tus.

Take Indian Hatha Yoga, for example. The person who goes to a noon hour yoga class a couple of times a week and seldom thinks about it otherwise is functionally reducing yoga to technique. It has little measurable effect on his / her life and won’t train any of the 3 markers of Personal Power, despite the fact that Hatha Yoga was developed to train Gong-Fu!

The same could be said for meditation or any other body-mind practice you can think of. For such a practice to deliver the Gong-Fu it was designed to, you first have to be sure you’re being taught the whole practice. For example, since


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most martial arts schools don’t train you in the internal aspects of their arts, most of them can’t help you learn Gong-Fu. Then, assuming you’re getting the real thing, you have to practice it correctly. That’s actually the easy part. Harder is practicing with the proper end in mind – knowing what the practice is really for and doing it in that context.

Context is part of the problem. Since our cultural context has become so dis-torted, none of the real practices that delivered Gong-Fu in the past have a place to “fit in”. We can only see them as discreet and separate techniques somehow designed to enhance our lives.

And as long as we see them that way, they won’t deliver their benefits, except in small doses.

It’s as if the “key” in which we see everything is a few musical notes off. The ancient world’s unspoken key was built on some basic assumptions that our culture hasn’t shared for centuries:

Your mind and body are a single organism 1.

Your mind-body organism is the instrument through which you come to 2. know yourself, your world and the universe

Your task in life is to refine that instrument in order to do that3.

Another typical misconception is that physical exercise will create Personal Power. If only the truth were that simple!

At their best, conventional forms of exercise will deliver the three core benefits of exercise, all of which are indeed important factors in Personal Power:

Core body 1. strength

Soft tissue and joint 2. flexibility

Cardio-vascular 3. endurance

It’s as if the “key” in which we see

everything is a few musical notes off


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One catch is that few exercise programs balance these three aspects well. Runners, for example, seldom achieve core strength or flexibility, since their fo-cus is primarily on endurance.

The greater problem, though, is that conventional exercise simply cannot de-liver the 3 markers of Personal Power – not even “Physical Stability” – it wasn’t designed to.

It won’t strengthen your connective tissues properly, detoxify your body ad-equately and promote superior energy circulation or maximum organ health.

And some forms of exercise can be quite counter-productive in several ways. I recently saw a TV ad for a home exercise machine. The guy advertising it said he used to be a fat couch potato and now he’s built like a body-builder. So what’s really being sold is the idea that to be in shape, men have to look a lot like the Hulk, minus the green skin.

The truth, though, is that body-building builds muscle bulk at the expense of muscle function and tendon strength. It compromises speed and flexibility, doesn’t get you to your real potential for physical strength and worse, by com-promising your fascia structure, it tends to knock your posture out of alignment, which impedes energy circulation and therefore health itself.

So the notion that any form of physical exercise will automatically build Personal Power is very inaccurate. Yes, exercise is indispensable, but certain types of exercise are much more efficient at building Personal Power or Gong-Fu than most conventional types of exercise.

WHY SElF-HElp ISN’T “HElpING” YOU

The reason why most of your efforts to apply what you’ve learned in the Per-sonal Development / Self-Help field have come to nought isn’t such a mystery.

You may have been inclined to pin it on one of the 22 reasons listed in section 1. And some of those may be part of it, yes. The real reason, though, is this:

It’s the same old you trying to apply something new and different to your life.


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To apply anything new successfully, you’ve got to have the Personal Power, the Gong-Fu to do so. Otherwise, you’re just in a battle with your old habits. And modern brain research can give you quantifiable neurological data to show you why habit is several thousand times stronger than desire. Who do you think will win? Who has won in the past, habit or desire?

We all tend toward the habitual, no matter how bad the habitual is. Only Gong-Fu can overcome habit and build new and more useful habits.

Ultimately, what you’re looking for is High Personal Effectiveness (HPE) in every area of your life and the results to show for it. Unfortunately, you’re stuck in a culture and educational background that, despite all their bluster to the contrary, have taught you Low Personal Effective-ness (LPE) in a surprisingly effective way

Think about James Bond. Sure, he’s a fictional character. But if you put aside for the moment his less productive life-style habits (smok-ing, excessive drinking, womanizing), you have somebody you could parachute into almost any situation and he’d come out on top. He

can take on any persona or manifest any skill necessary to get the job done. In other words, he’s super-competent.

An even better fictional example of HPE is Kwai Chang Caine, hero of the movie Kung-Fu and its two offshoot TV series. Caine always gets amazing results, and not based on technique. His results come directly from his enor-mous inner strength, his Gong-Fu or Personal Power.

High Personal Effectiveness and super-competence in every area of life is what you desperately want. There’s only one way to get it – start building Personal Power now. And there’s only one way to get Personal Power – dump the tech-nique mentality in favor of Gong-Fu.


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THE FUTURE – THE CUlTURE OF TOTAl HARMONY

As I write these words to you at the very beginning of 2010, there is no doubt whatsoever that Western culture is in a profound state of transition.

In point of fact, it’s no exaggeration to say that we’re in the throes of a cultural revolution of the most far reaching variety… a revolution that will run so deep as to exceed, quite possibly, any other in human history.

In the end, this inner revolution is going to produce a culture of HARMONY.

That may sound trite at first sight, but bear with me and you’ll see there’s more to that concept than you can imagine.

The Four Failures

Through much of the 20th century we had pinned our hopes on several factors that promised to give us paradise on earth. Yet, as time marched on, we have become increasingly disillusioned with these factors, and for obvious reasons – they’ve all failed to deliver.

And so here we are at the beginning of the new century - and the new millen-nium for that matter - stuck in a cultural paradigm (a way of thinking, acting and cognizing reality) that’s left us more miserable than ever before.

As a society, we’re spiritually lost and confused, our emotional lives are a mess, our health is poor, our relationships unfulfilling and at best, we’re barely coping with life. The health care system, the mental health system and the prisons are full to overflowing. Where did we go wrong?

1. Classical liberalism

The first factor that has failed us is Classical Liberalism. I don’t mean “liberal” as opposed to “conservative” here, since classical liberalism in some measure forms the underpinnings of both. Classical liberalism taught that once people


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are literate and educated, they’ll make intelligent decisions and the quality of life will improve immensely.

As attractive as it sounds – and there is of course a grain of truth in it (no one will get very far trying to persuade you that illiteracy and superstition are virtues!) – history has demonstrated that this just isn’t so.

The life of the average person is becoming more burdensome, not less, with each passing generation. Using the indicators of physical health, emotional health, subjective happiness and social cohesion, we would have to conclude that clas-sical liberal doctrine contains an error.

What went wrong? If we use Authentic Ancient Traditions as a guide, the answer can be summed up easily in two words – false anthropology.

In other words, classical liberalism arose of the time of an unparalleled split be-tween the mind and the body. And all its assumptions are based on the ideas of rationalism – that you are identical to your thoughts and your brain, that your ability to reason logically sets you apart from the lower animals, and that your physical body is of no intrinsic importance.

The clinical conclusions of Authentic Traditions, including the original Christian tra-dition, on this approach to life are stark indeed – this approach will turn you into a neurotic. It’s a recipe for all kinds of chronic physical and emotional problems, and, as if that weren’t bad enough, no genuine spiritual life capable of trans-forming the human person can possibly be built where these assumptions exist.

2. Technology

The second failure is that of technology in general. The belief of the 1950s and early 1960s was that technology would replace all our dreary manual tasks and leave us with much more free time. Technology was also supposed to solve many of our health problems and eliminate the diseases that threaten our survival.

Instead, we’re busier than ever before, almost run off our feet most of the time. And all our gadgetry has, if anything, added to the sum total of the busy-ness, in much the same way that the “paperless office” turned out to be a ridiculous myth.


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Technology, though morally neutral in itself, has failed to deliver on the prom-ises of its proponents. And through the premature introduction of many forms of technology, usually for reasons of corporate greed, technology has often caused huge health problems that have taken decades to unravel, while sending tens of millions of people to a premature end in the process.

3. Modern Medicine

The third factor that’s failed is the health care system and the medical science it’s built on. So-called “allopathic medicine”, the mainstream medicine of the Western world dating from the pharmaceutical revolution of the 1920s and ‘30s, has failed on almost every count. My parents’ generation, brought up in the Depression, was trained to accord this medicine a kind of god-like status and to accept the word of the medical doctor as if he were a combination prophet and savior.

This medical paradigm has proven incompetent in matters of both diagnosis and cure. It operated for decades in total denial that things like nutrition or emotion could have any effect on your health (as crazy as that sounds today!). It spent decades insisting that your health was determined by your genes and that your behavior had little influence on it – despite all the readily observable evidence to the contrary. Under its reign, all the most serious chronic conditions that plague our society have become bigger threats than they were before.

What went wrong? Simple again, according to the ancient world’s best medical traditions – wrong assumptions:

The assumption that the mind has no influence on the body is wrong • The assumption you can do little to determine your state of health is wrong • The assumption that disease is best combated by carrying out chemical •warfare on pathogens or by cutting out and perhaps replacing diseased body parts is wrong.

With huge numbers of people turning to “alternative medicine” and often having far better results to show for it, the face of modern medicine is slowly and surely


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changing. We’re witnessing a “grass-roots enforced” integration of allopathic and alternative medicine that has much more to offer society as a whole.

There’s another aspect to this that will have enormous impact and already is. The ancient medical paradigms that underlie most of “alternative” medicine are holistic paradigms that emphasize the need for balance and harmony on all levels of life.

4. The paradoxical “Failure” of Science

The 20th century will be remembered more than anything as the century of science. Not only was it the century in which modern science was idolized beyond measure - and, yes, failed to deliver on a great many promises - but it was also the century of unparalleled scientific achievement.

Science, more than any other single factor, is the cause of the coming Revolu-tion of Harmony. You see, science didn’t really fail… it succeeded all too well.

Science, driven largely by shocking discoveries in quantum physics, has over-thrown most of its previous fundamental conclusions about the nature of reality itself.

The mechanistic, impersonal, hostile and ultimately dangerous universe por-trayed by the physics of Sir Isaac Newton, the philosophy of Renee Descartes and the theorizing of Charles Darwin has been progressively undermined by a variety of startling discoveries over the past century.

Sir Isaac Newton Rene Descartes Charles Darwin


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The previous conclusions that:

The material world is solid and real •

The universe is governed by impersonal laws •

Rational thought is what defines humanity •

Humans are separate from the natural world, which is hostile •and dangerous

Anything real can be objectively observed•

…have been replaced with these findings:

Matter is an energy field composed largely of empty space – a 1. holo-graphic reality

There is no “objective observer” since observing changes the outcome 2.

The universe is governed by 3. consciousness

People and phenomena are linked to each other on a subatomic level4.

And all this means that:

The “spiritual” realm does in fact exist •

Prayer and “distance healing” experiments can now be explained, •at least in part

The world is more like a living organism than a lump of clay •

The universe is more like a thought than a machine •

Emotional states affect material substance•


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Science is slowly revealing a universe that is more “magical” than we would have believed.

However, despite the fact that science disproved the basic assumptions of the Western worldview decades ago, that worldview is so culturally ingrained that to this very day, most people think, perceive and act as if the last one hundred years of physics never happened...

Nevertheless, the crushing weight of evidence will even-tually prevail. The question is not “if” the Western world-view will implode but “how fast”. This implosion will dis-credit not only Newton, Descartes and Darwin, but also their predecessors…

Anselm, Aquinas and finally Augustine.

Few people realize it, but the hostile and mechanistic universe of Newton, Descartes and Darwin did not originate with them. It was in the air. It was the product of a false, pseudo-Christian theology that goes back to Augustine of Hippo (354-430) and was amplified by the teachings of his most important follow-ers, Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) and Thomas Aquinas (1275-1274).

As I made clear in The 5 Pillars of Life, this version of the Christian worldview is vir-tually the inverse of the worldview of the original Christian tradition, as preserved in the Christian East. All of that is easily provable by any objective analysis of the historical data.

So science is now at the forefront of the Revolution of Harmony and in so doing it will not only validate the findings of Authentic Ancient Traditions, it will also bury the previous science of anti-harmony AND the theology it was based on.

Science is slowly revealing a universe that is more “magical” than we would have believed


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THERE MAY bE SOME DElAYS, OF COURSE…

Several factors may conspire to slow down the inevitable progress of the revolution.

As I mentioned, people are notoriously slow to assimilate new information, espe-cially when the old information, however erroneous, is at the very basis of their habitual ways of thinking, acting and perceiving.

Moreover, some people feel threatened by any challenge to the existing world-view and will resist it tooth and nail on simple emotional grounds.

Others, including many entrenched interests with lots of money, power and influ-ence, will resist it for their own self-serving reasons because their very existence and prosperity depends on perpetuating lies and half-truths.

One feature of the coming culture of harmony that’s very distressing to the am-bitious and powerful is that it will inevitably produce a population that can’t be manipulated by any amount of media propaganda. So you can count on orga-nized opposition to the revolution.

A final delaying factor worth noting belongs, paradoxically, to the very people who are the natural proponents of the revolution – people who are interested in and practicing holistic methods of healing, authentic spiritual traditions and the like. The fact that so many of them automatically approach what they do as technique rather than Gong-Fu means that the real implications of all of this are not assimilated as fast as they might be.

The catalyst will come in the form of whoever can demonstrate how the revolution of harmony can be translated into a viable lifestyle on a mass level.

By reading this, you are among the first to learn how to do exactly that.


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THE ANGER FACTOR

We often think of anger as a wholly negative emotion. Authentic traditions don’t agree and will tell you that the matter is a bit more complex.

You see, anger… righteous anger with sane thinking behind it… is playing an increasing role in bringing on the Revolution of Harmony.

People are angry. And they should be. They’re angry at a culture and lifestyle that’s making them miserable. They’re angry at being continually manipulated by politicians and the media. They’re angry at putting up with lies that disguise themselves as truth. They’re angry at the continuing injustice and oppression that characterize so much of the planet. It’s a simple fact that as human be-ings we seldom embrace meaningful change until we hit rock bottom, until we get so fed up that we stand up and say NO MORE!

And people are increasingly tired of being enslaved to the religious dogmas of the past. The spiritual development of mankind is best served by combining two things we’ve never been very good at:

1. Tolerance for any spiritual path that can prove its authenticity and results

2. Intellectual honesty that identifies and tolerates genuinely incompatible points of view, as well as the “agony” of not having a nice, neat and intellectu-ally satisfying answer.

People today want results. They have – fortunately – less and less tolerance for religious ideologies that promise a post-mortem salvation while leaving them unchanged physically, mentally and emotionally. This is a very healthy sign. The very existence of the New Age Movement, with all its positive and negative aspects, is part of this refusal to become a prisoner of a useless ideology.

People want what works. They want the intellectual freedom to explore. They want a comprehensive spiritual outlook that does not derive its energy from the negative emotions of intolerance, hatred, anger and judgment.


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THE REvOlUTION OF HARMONY

The essence of Authentic Ancient Traditions, as I’ve described them in The 5 Pil-lars of Life, is an all-embracing search for Harmony. Harmony in this overarching sense means:

Harmony of mind and body•Harmony of emotion•Harmony on the physical level – within every organ and cell•Harmony of human relationships•Harmony with the surrounding environment•

All of this hinges on you personally adopting the following points of view:

You can only access the deep mind through the body•Your mind-body organism is a single unified whole•Your mind-body organism is an instrument •Refining this instrument results in transformation•Transformation is the essence and meaning of life•Engaging the transformational process demands commitment and •firm resolve

Harmony is within. Although there are challenges to entering within yourself, you’ll find in time that the joy of living within yourself – versus “living in your head” you probably do now – is far more satisfying than any form of entertainment.

Harmony produces Gong-Fu and is the product of Gong-Fu. And that’s why Gong-Fu is critical.

Let me explain. I’ve known lots of New Age folks who have practiced medita-tion, sometimes for years, while having little to show for it. They had the same neuroses, relationship problems, money problems and all other difficulties as before they started.

The problem was this. They were dabbling. Their meditation had only a mar-ginal affect at best on their thought, emotion and behavior because there was

Harmony is within


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no “bridge” to enable them to take their meditation with them in their daily activities.

The “bridge” is not so much a technique as Gong-Fu itself. It is only by culti-vating Gong-Fu, by amassing the Personal Power, that real gains happen.

This is more readily understandable if we use the Chi-nese concepts of yin and yang. Cultivating harmony within, which is one of the goals of most meditation methods, is the “yin” activity. And as anyone who has tried this knows from bitter experience, your little proj-ect of cultivating harmony is continually surrounded by all kinds of violent forces that will snuff it out, much like a small sapling is set upon by the elements.

You’ll be attacked by ferocious emotional energies from the inside. You’ll be attacked by the demands of other people on your time and energy. You’ll be attacked by health challenges. You’ll be attacked by a thousand and one things you don’t control that will surround your personal “harmony project” like a swarm of bees.

How do you beat them? Simple. There’s only one way that has ever worked in human history. Gong-Fu. Gong-Fu is the “yang” energy that protects the “yin” energy of your inner work. The purpose of Gong-Fu is to make you im-pervious to all of the energies that attack you.

And, Gong-Fu will return you to your natural state and create an incredibly deep level of harmony within you, a harmony so great you can hardly imagine it.

Gong-Fu will return you to

your natural state and create an

incredibly deep level of harmony

within you


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YOUR GUIDE TO MASTERING GONG-FU

Have you ever seen Shaolin warrior monks practicing or performing? Whether or not you have, I strongly suggest that after you finish reading this, you hightail it over to YouTube and have a look: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=7qHL2PSpecI.

I’d like you to pay attention to two things:

Their ability to absorb fearsome blows with no effect and no pain•Their ability to deliver blows that can smash wood, brick and stone•

Although I can teach you the exact methods for becoming so physically strong that you can easily throw around a larger opponent like a rag doll, pulverize stone with your bare hands or get clobbered without feeling it…

….I don’t think you have the slightest interest in that. “Who cares?” you’re prob-ably asking. And I wouldn’t blame you. Those are specialized martial arts abili-ties that only martial arts geeks fantasize about. However…

Here’s what you should care about…

Those specialized martial arts abilities are just external manifestations of a coher-ent body of ancient knowledge that also knows how to:

Exponentially increase your physical strength and resilience1. Clear your mind of negative thoughts and uncontrollable emotions2. Send your health and immunity through the roof3. Give you all the 4. Gong-Fu, the Personal Power, you could possibly imag-ine!

While martial arts skills like breaking bricks aren’t relevant to most people, these four fundamental abilities are relevant to everyone.

This coherent body of ancient knowledge is still easily accessible today and it is by far the fastest and most reliable way to achieve genuine Gong-Fu, true Personal Power.


http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=7qHL2PSpecI

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After 35 years of exploring virtually all ancient and modern approaches to per-sonal development, my conclusion is precisely this:

For the modern Western man or woman, the most vital need is for a powerful energy management system that reunites mind and body, while returning the mind-body organism to its natural state. This results in Gong-Fu. Gong-Fu will take you from a life marred by poor results to a life of excellence.

So far, Self-Help has largely considered that excellence was something you get simply by deciding to do so. Alas, life is not so simple. Yes, commitment and determination are vital, but Personal Power is even more so.

And Gong-Fu is an absolute prerequisite for HARMONY – an entirely new-to-you and more satisfactory way of life.

Harmony is what allows the “energy-depleting cycle” that nearly everyone around you is locked into to be transformed into the “energy-building cycle” that takes you to endless progress in life.

Gong-Fu is an absolute

prerequisite for HARMONY


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HOW GONG-FU WORkS

Any systematic approach to building you up physically, mentally, emotion-ally and spiritually in a balanced way can be called Gong-Fu, no matter where it comes from.

Different civilizations cultivated Gong-Fu in different ways and sometimes for different purposes. The Gong-Fu practices of the Eastern Christian ascetics are not quite the same as those of their Shaolin counterparts because no martial component is involved, yet they also get the necessary results…

When I lived with some of them in Greece for a month several years ago, I found myself physically unable to keep up with the daily activities of men over twice my age – and I was in good shape (or so I thought)! Their practic-es had led these men to master their inner world and I found them radiating an unbelievable joy and peace. And their life spans are usually well above average.

The Gong-Fu approach I’m describing below is largely Taoist in inspiration. In my opinion, it’s much more accessible to most people today than any other approach.

Clarification: If you’re about to ask whether this whole Special Report comes down to “Dr. Rodger says Self-Help doesn’t work, so study Qi Gong,” you’ve missed the point.

This is about abandoning technique and embracing Gong-Fu.

Technique is a piece-meal approach that will prevent you from transforming your life on a deep level, from experiencing true happiness and fulfillment. It will leave you forever powerless and searching for external solutions to your multitude of problems. Technique is an endless search for “bandaids”.

Gong-Fu is a holistic approach that will eliminate most of these problems and radically improve your experience of life.


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Gong-Fu uses an array of “tools” to accomplish its tasks:

Meditation •

Breathing•

Postural adjustment•

Massage•

Percussion•

Visualization•

Inner feeling / sensing•

Methods for absorbing and expelling energy•

Stretching•

Soft tissue manipulation•

Rhythmic / coordinated movement•

Opening and closing joints•

And it deals with every aspect of your being:

The brain mind (conscious, rational mind)•

The heart mind (including the mental attention and the subconscious)•

The internal organs•

The nervous system•

The 12 acupuncture meridians, the 8 Extraordinary Vessels and all other •energy pathways in the bodyMuscles, tendons, ligaments•

Bones and marrow•

Blood•

Glands•

The mental continuum (consciousness)•

Various levels of the energy body•

The training syllabus for attaining true Gong-Fu looks something like this. There are many variations on this, some more useful than others. This one is what I believe to be the optimal sequence for most people in our culture. The word


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“sequence” needs to be used with caution though, since nearly all of these activities overlap and complement each other:

Enter into mental stillness 1.

Realign posture, strengthen the skeletal structure and optimize connec-2. tive tissue

Master all aspects of the breathing process 3.

Conserve, generate and circulate energy through the body 4.

Pack energy into the fasciae, organs and bones structure 5.

Process all previous emotional conditioning 6.

Integrate all of these elements into a harmonious whole7.

Once you’ve gone through the syllabus, you will have built considerable Gong-Fu. And your foundation of HARMONY will be complete.

People often ask, “How long does it take to feel a difference?” Well, as long as this is competently taught, the answer is…”somewhere between seconds and minutes”.

That said, only consistent training with the right intention will yield lasting results and the extraordinary Gong-Fu that ac-companies your return to your NATURAL psycho-physical state.

And that natural state is just the beginning, the necessary foundation of a joyous journey you’ll be on for the rest of your life.

Only consistent

training with the right

intention will yield lasting

results


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NExT STAGES

After you acquire Gong-Fu, your task is to allow Harmony to expand into every second of your life, to suffuse itself through all your thoughts, actions and activi-ties. You don’t have to run off to the mountains and become a hermit. You continue doing what you have always done, except that now your daily activi-ties build you up instead of tearing you down.

From this stage, you can, if you choose, cultivate higher levels of consciousness through such practices as prayer, meditation, unconditional love, thanksgiving, and forgiveness. You may have had some experience with these already, but after the acquisition of Gong-Fu, your experience with them will be immeasur-ably more powerful.

A Daring prediction

I will make a daring prediction: a century from now, Western culture will have become a Harmony-centered culture, and every aspect of it will look very dif-ferent because of that.

Over the next century, no matter how much technological advance changes the face of our culture, my bet is that the change in inner orientation will be even more significant.

History has shown us clearly that technology, however useful, is not what will solve our collective or individual problems. Gong-Fu will. It has enabled a total transformation of human lives in the past and it can do so again.

And as the experience of Self-Help and Personal Development is beginning to show, until the human person returns to their natural state through the acqui-sition of Personal Power, all the techniques and gimmicks in the world won’t make much difference.

Do you want to transform your life? Do you want to succeed in every area of life? Then practice and acquire Gong-Fu and you will.


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Gong-Fu should be part of the educational system. It’s the first and most vital skill we can teach our children. Real education is about maximizing human potential, about teaching people how they can live long, healthy, joyous and fulfilling lives. It’s not just about stuffing the heads of the young with endless concepts and attaching some “physical education” as an after-thought, as we do now.

In fact, Gong-Fu can be learned by anyone of any age. It’s actually FUN and it gives amazing results.

You Will Still Need Techniques (the plural, that is!)

That said, I don’t want to leave you with the idea that applying particular tech-niques is somehow bad, evil or ineffective. Techniques are simply tools. And some of the tools out there for you today are definitely worth your time and ef-fort.

The problem is that the effectiveness of a given technique will rarely exceed the Gong-Fu level of the person trying to put it into practice. It’s all about the quality of the “soil” you “plant” the technique in… and you’re the soil! If your Gong-Fu is at a high level, you can multiply the effectiveness of a technique many times over.

For the next few minutes, I’m going to ask you to forget all about Gong-Fu and Personal Power. I’m doing this so that I can make another point that you need to understand in order to get superior results.

In your search for inner peace, control of your time and energy, better health, fulfilling relationships and financial security, I hope you’re not falling into the common trap everyone else is...

The Mindless Search for the Silver bullet

People flit from one thing to the next in search of the magic cure-all for whatev-er’s wrong in their life. So they dabble a bit with meditation, martial arts, yoga, EFT, and lots of other things... most of which are good things in themselves.


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Yet they don’t stick with any one thing long enough to see results.

Whether they’re looking for a technique or a technological gizmo or a pill or a philosophy... they’re always disappointed.

A Different Approach

As I was off doing a speech last year about how large companies can improve their financial results, it occurred to me that successful people have always used the same strategy in their lives that smart companies do.

Let me explain...

If a company improves just 5 of its key activities by a mere 10%, it will almost un-avoidably improve its profitability by about 50% (which is MASSIVE).

That’s the key to “geometric” business growth. Of course, companies do this by doing specific things differently and then measuring the results.

Geometric life Improvement

Do you think you could take just ONE action that would improve some area of your life each week? Is there something you could do and MEASURE to improve your life? Could you improve:

Your diet?•Your fitness level?•Your use of time?•The amount of quiet time you have for yourself?•A relationship with someone?•

Sure you could!

“Wait a minute!” you say, “How can you ‘measure’ a relationship??” Simple… Let’s suppose you’re having trouble communicating with your teenager. Sup-


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pose you were to deliberately plan two extra interactions with him/her each day for a week... interactions where you have NO agenda - no nagging about this or that, no “do this” or “don’t do that”…. interactions where your only objective is to allow him/her to feel loved and needed.

That much you CAN measure. As for the improvement you’ll see in how your teenager responds to you, that you’ll have to do subjectively on a scale of 1-10.

No question About It

If you take this approach and strive to improve just ONE area of your life per week by just 5-10%, you’ll have an INCREDIBLY better life a year from now. Heck, you won’t recognize your life 6 months from now!

In other words, while you’re building Gong-Fu and Per-sonal Power, you should not throw techniques out the window. You’ll still have a need from time to time for specific methods to accomplish your specific goals.

And anyone who consistently uses techniques, apply-ing one small method thoroughly with dedication and follow-through each week or month, will experience geometric growth. It’s a mathematical certainty.

The key here is implementing ONLY one change at a time and doing it thor-oughly.

Personal Development is a science. It’s a science in the sense that its outcomes are almost always measurable (if you know what to measure and how), AND because improvement is mathematically predictable on a consistent basis.

The purpose of adopting the Gong-Fu approach as opposed to our standard technique approach is simply to tilt the mathematical odds wildly in your favor.

The key here is implementing

ONLY one change at a

time and doing it thoroughly


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HERE’S WHAT TO DO RIGHT NOW…

If tilting the mathematical odds wildly in your favor sounds like something you’d be interested in, then here’s a very effective way of doing just that:

Go to http://www.warriorcoachinginternational.com/RSHQG/details.php

That’s where I share with you an extraordinary and well-proven method for achieving true Gong-Fu in your life, a method developed, tested and tweaked over the centuries by the very culture that developed it to the highest degree.

You’ll learn more about:

The 5 most vital Qi Gong systems and the most efficient way to learn •them, including:

Self-Massage Qi Gongo for health

Muscle-Tendon Changing Qi Gongo – the warrior’s original “get tough” method

Bone Marrow Cleansing Qi Gongo – the original “detox”

Iron Shirt Qi Gongo – Designed to protect you from attack or injury, it also has astonishing health benefits

Energy Circulation Qi Gongo – ensuring you circulate and renew your energy efficiently

Vital steps to avoiding the • 7 deadly spirals of disease so that you keep your body humming along nicely into old age

And an even more comprehensive solution that includes the 5 Qi Gong •systems and much more –-> the Warriorship Black Belt Program

The Warriorship Black Belt Program remakes your whole life systematically, integrating the essential principles of Authentic Ancient Traditions with the best the modern world has to offer.

It begins with the ancient science of HARA – the mind-body secret to the imperturbable calm of the Samurai, to eliminating stress from your life and to cultivating personal power.


http://www.warriorcoachinginternational.com/RSHQG/details.php

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Over the course of 26 units, this high-end life-mastery course covers everything from your physical health and fitness to your mindset, your use of time and energy, your emotional fitness, diet and detoxification, stress elimination, your spiritual life and even the science of and exact tools for generating the income you need.

This is the course that I searched high and low for decades ago. However, it didn’t exist! And it took me those intervening years to master all this material and to figure out how to help other people learn it in the fastest and easiest way possible.

If I had to choose one set of skills that everyone should master to achieve the very best results in life, this would be it.

Now the good news. The Warriorship Black Belt Program is usually very expensive. However, as a way of thanking you for your sincere attention to this Special Report and for your dedication to improving your own life and the lives of others, I am making available a number of very large scholarships, so your monetary investment will be minimal. To get all the details, simply go to the link below and follow the pages in order…


See you on the other side, in the land of personal power and harmony!

Dr. Symeon Rodger

(Endnotes)1 Walter Gjergja, “The Teachings of Shi Deyang” in Shaolin Kung-Fu Tai Chi, Nov-Dec. 2007. Fre-mont, CA: Pacific Rim Publishing, 2007, p.26.



SPECIAL REPORT GONG-FU! · 2010. 2. 22. · systems of personal development through spiritual...

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