The secrets to a meaningful life and, I believe, the very meaning of life itself, lies in our etheric body and the chi-cycle. If we follow the cycle during the day, over time we can experience what I call ‘the sleep of meaning’ at night. Our Hun, or ethereal soul, travels to the astral world and returns with advice about why we are here. Our soul purpose becomes clearer so each day we are more in-flow with who we really are and what our destiny is, and our actions will reflect this. As the soul comes fully forward, you will feel fulfilled and happiness and joy arise. You will understand the meaning of your life and what you really need will come to you. The chi-cycle is like the universe’s satellite navigation system. The final location is locked in for us, we just have to follow the directions to attract our destiny through what I call etherically integrated goal setting. If we are not connected to this master program our etheric system can’t function properly, we don’t have clarity and we make decisions or set material goals that may not necessarily harmonise with our soul purpose. Ultimately this can prove destructive to our health.

Step one for setting etherically integrated goals is to follow the chi cycle because if we know where we are at all times and what we are supposed to be doing, it allows our etheric system to function and part of this is providing insight into our purpose. This is why life in religious orders is so disciplined. At any hour of the day or night, monks, nuns or religious initiates know where they are and what they should be doing. This allows their focus to be on their spiritual development. We don’t want to live like monks of course, but neither do we want to be spending all our time confused about when to get up, if to eat, what to eat, what to do next, what to have for dinner, whether to invite friends over, what to watch on TV, or what to do with our lives. This lifestyle leads to pathologies and drifts us further from finding our purpose. Back in the 90’s I lived this way and as a result I established material goals that were not necessarily connected to my bigger picture. Each day I wrote pages of affirmations and visualised chains of busy healthcare centres, fleets of cars with my logo on them, and myself leading crowded seminars on wealth, health and success - wearing a head-mic like Anthony Robbins - I could see the whole thing. But this vision wasn’t connected with my soul purpose because I wasn’t connected to the universal intelligence. It wasn’t etherically integrated so it didn’t work out the way I intended.

In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) the etheric world is the primary concern. This is where it all goes down. Health is regulated by the etheric body and pathology arises and develops in the etheric organs. These, by the way, are different to our physical organs. People keep asking me what happens (in relation to the chi cycle) if you have your spleen or another organ removed. In traditional Chinese medicine there are two types of organs, the dense physical organs of your physical body and the etheric organs of your etheric body. If the physical organ is removed the etheric organ is still there and it still functions. This invisible aspect of our organs is not sounding as farfetched as it once did either. In Deepak Chopra’s recent talk in Brisbane, he stated that science has ‘discovered’ and ‘proven’ that our emotions are housed in our organs. In TCM this has been known for thousands of years, but it is also known that our organs have spiritual resources and connect us with the universal intelligence. The spiritual resource of our liver (the organ associated with purpose), is the Hun, our ethereal soul. In five element theory the energetics of goal-setting could be described as follows: the Hun relates to the wood element and water nurtures wood. Water is also related to your kidneys and jing, your life force and thus your etheric blueprint (because water and kidneys are the basis of life). If I am sensitive to my etheric energetics from living the chi cycle, I sense the relationship between water and wood and set goals that factor in my true purpose. This is what I work on with my clients because otherwise goal-setting can turn against them. My past success goals were based on a mental concept, a picture of myself having recognition and wealth. This was all about how other people would see me and not my true purpose so I created friction in the wood element because my goal-setting was not supported by water. If wood is not nurtured by water it doesn’t grow. This leads to stagnation and eventually a heat pattern arises. As illness originates in the etheric body, this is the beginning of a pathology. It usually starts by affecting the etheric spleen and this impacts on the production of chi and blood. In my case, as production of chi and blood decreased I was not receiving energy from my post-natal Jing, the energy derived from food, water and air, and I had to rely on my mental energy to keep me going. This meant drawing from my precious pre-natal Jing, the energy given to us at birth by the universe and by our parents. This is like a savings account and constantly drawing from it without ever putting back into it guarantees collapse.

I didn’t know this was happening at the time and was still determined to do whatever it took to reach my goals. But this increased the stagnation in my etheric liver. The liver’s job is to circulate chi smoothly throughout the body-system but it couldn’t do it so my other organs didn’t receive vitalizing chi and suffered accordingly. My spleen was affected so I developed dizziness and I constantly lost the thread of conversations in pressured or stressful situations or became ‘blank-minded’ during speeches. My blood and yin was depleted and I had mental energy I couldn’t control. I couldn’t sink-in, couldn’t switch off and then couldn’t sleep. This was critically important because my Hun’s ability to access my spiritual guidance during sleep was affected and I drifted further and further away from health and my soul purpose. So despite all my goal-setting I felt empty. We are designed to function on the ‘sleep of meaning’. I think it is only now that I have finally understood and experienced this. In my drug days I couldn’t sleep without smoking dope. Because dope creates a (artificial but corrupted) smooth flow in the etheric liver, it made falling asleep feel purposeful and subconsciously I recognised this as being right, but the drugs were impacting negatively on my etheric organs. In my days of wanting to be a success-guru, sometimes alcohol could put me to sleep as it too affects the liver but it wouldn’t be long before the heat pattern would come forward to wake me up. Without alcohol I often couldn’t fall asleep at all. These days, if I have integrated myself etherically throughout the day, I can easily fall into purposeful sleep and I can sense the significant activity that is taking place as I drift away. I’m handing over to the bigger picture. The more of this sleep I get, the more clear I am about my life. As a result my meaning in life is not derived from what I do or acquire, but from being connected to the universe. Without this quality of sleep goal-setting can be random and can create pathologies. I’m not saying get rid of your material goals or dreams of fame and fortune, I’m suggesting a re-shuffle so that your soul gets a look-in. Get etherically integrated goals, it will change your life and it will change the future of the planet. Our desire for material goods is unsustainable and it is contributing to the destruction of the planet, but I think we goal-set for these because we are out of synch with the cosmos and the process by which we gain meaning in life and access our soul. I’ve been reading Worldshift 2012 : Making Green Business, New Politics, and Higher Consciousness Work Together by Ervin Laszlo. He states that ‘possessing material goods beyond what’s needed to ensure a decent quality of life is not a sign of achievement; on the contrary, it’s an indication of backward thinking’. I’m also reading The Wolf of Wall Street - about the infamous Wall St trader, Jordan Belfort, who went from multi-million dollar success to jail - to get the other side of the story. The Wolf achieved material wealth beyond most people’s wildest aspirations. In a recent interview about his exploits, which famously included once earning 12 million dollars in a couple of minutes, he stated that money in itself was meaningless, he had to attach it to material possessions to try and find meaning. But it is obvious throughout his book that no amount of caviar, mansions, cars or luxury goods was enough to deliver him meaning or happiness. Laszlo proposes that ‘real wealth lies not in the possession of money, but in living a fulfilling life’. Of course we have all heard this many times over in many ways from many spiritual sources, but once a similar thread underscores the thinking of the cashed-up hedonists such as, The Wolf, who really do know about material wealth, I think it is significant.

I believe real wealth lies in nurturing our etheric organs and their magical connection with the universe because this connects us to the journeying of our soul. The ‘sleep of meaning’ reinforces my knowledge that this current incarnation is only one little identity amongst countless others, so in my daily life I can’t act as if it is all there is. We all have to die so I believe the most important thing is to stay connected to our true nature. From this perspective purely material gaols are never going to be enough for us because none of us are taking that stuff with us when we go, and deep down we all know this. We commonly say ‘I lost everything’ when we hit a financial crisis and lose our houses, cars or possessions, but no one says this on their deathbed - at the only truly appropriate time for such a comment. Why? Because at that stage we know having stuff is not meaningful. If we catch onto that earlier in life it will make a difference. If you are into goal-setting but not sure if your goals are etherically integrated, I suggest making chi cycle health your prime goal because the outcome is soul-realisation

SUNDAY 6TH JUNE      BRISBANE       OLD MUSEUM

www.yogafest.com.au

This approach to success is the old way of the old world. But it is constantly being encouraged in success books. I still read this literature but not long ago I lived by it. Back in the 90s I put business goaIs first and when I wasn’t working I was either listening to success CDs in my sporty cars or going to success seminars. Anthony Robbins, Jim Rohn and Brian Tracy, were my heroes. They promised me a bright future and I willingly handed myself over to it. The present and my inner world were irrelevant. I had no time for anything but work. Eventually my body reached the point where it was no longer able to process the constant yang of that lifestyle and it all came crashing to a halt via Grand Mal seizures. After the second time I went through this cycle I got the message, or so I thought. I really understood how important health was, so I took stock of my life and identified my soul purpose. Visits to renowned psychics were a part of this process and they all saw me writing books and - being highly successful. Sharing my knowledge of health through books seemed noble but deep down and unacknowledged, was the lure of success. So the house got sold to finance this new publishing venture but before long the old patterns to succeed at all costs crept up. Deadlines came to dictate my life but I had learned my lesson and I made time to maintain physical and spiritual health. However, it took time from my clinic work so I began living on credit. I wasn’t worried about this. Being thoroughly trained in success techniques I knew everything would work out because I was following all the guidelines. When funds ran low, I simply applied for more credit. Eventually three books were published and available in several countries. But the lengthy periods of writing meant I had neglected my business and I crashed again. This time it was a financial collapse. The car went, along with any possession that had any value. I simply couldn’t believe it. It seemed you could have health or wealth but not both.

I shifted focus back to my clinic, but I attracted one hugely successful client after another. They were driving cars I no longer had and living in houses like the one I had let go of. Once again I was confronted by success and wealth. A voice inside my head kept telling me this was the only reality worth aspiring to and I struggled with feelings of failure. I went through a reactive period of rejecting the success gurus, telling myself that they were only rich from presenting theories people were prepared to pay for, they needed people to buy their ideas. Where would Anthony Robbins or any of them be without their followers? I decided spirituality was the path and success and goals were irrelevant. I experimented with getting rid of my dreams but that didn’t last very long and I don’t believe it is the solution. According to the philosophy of traditional Chinese medicine, it is our job to develop our physical world with the ultimate goal of bringing heaven onto earth. Abundance is part of this. Then the penny dropped for me. Although a lot of my successful clients were exuding material abundance, I felt their pulses and internally they were presenting defeat and scarcity. Most were on a minimum of three medications to take care of their blood pressure, cholesterol and stress. In addition they needed medication to sleep as all of them complained about being unable to ‘switch off’ their minds at night. They were often control-freaks or unable to regulate their moods which led to regular outbursts which they regretted the next day. They might have pulled up in luxury vehicles and gone home to fabulous mansions, but their organs had a lifestyle of driving cheap bombs and living in run-down caravans. This is not heaven on earth. Heaven on earth is outer luxury matched with inner luxury: a body that feels as sumptuous as a Bentley, a mind that is as fast and smooth as a Ferrari and a spirit that knows the unconditional joy of a young child. Also, being non-reactive to others, in particular family members, and having so much mental space when dealing with stressful situations that you can consider options before deciding how to act. Who wouldn’t want this? But at the same time who wouldn’t want the nice cars and houses (myself included). So the next big question for me was – how can you have both? How can you be successful and healthy? I started asking my clients if they thought this was possible and everyone delivered the same answer: ‘well of course you can, look at ‘so and so’. David Bowie was a frequently cited example. But Bowie became healthy after his success. I saw him on stage at the height of his fame and he looked just as bad as me and my speed-addicted friends. No one could name anyone in their immediate environment who was successful and truly healthy. Maybe the two were mutually exclusive?

But the universe is perfect. If our job is to bring heaven onto earth we need to be seeking success, so there had to be a way. I now firmly believe the chi-cycle lifestyle is it. Firstly, because it is a system in which you can feel good if your dream doesn’t work out or you don’t achieve your goals, and secondly because it is a system that automatically reassesses the importance of your goals for you. In regards to the former, a chi-cycle lifestyle allows you to engage with material (temporary) goals while simultaneously establishing reference points for happiness that come from something that is permanent. The material world is extremely fragile and can collapse instantly. If my books don’t sell or no one wants my services and my wellbeing is dependent on that, I’m in big trouble. This does happen in any endeavor, it is part of the journey, but it is meant to happen with a fallback position of universal support and a connection with the eternal. The material world is temporary. We all know this of course but it is theoretical until you can feel it. I feel it by following the chi-cycle. Each morning at 5am colon time, I get up and while I do my chi-gung and weights I focus my thoughts on ‘emptiness’ or ‘mortality and death’ as that tunes me into the idea of eternity, the ‘bigger picture’ as the Dalai Lama likes to call it. I used to project my business goals and do positive thinking and affirmations in the morning during my practice, but I no longer do this as it means I am seeking support from the temporary and fragile physical world. When that falls through, as it inevitably will, I am left out on my own. If, however, I am connected with the universal energy flow, from following the chi-cycle and connecting with my eternal self at this time in the morning, I have permanent ‘back-up’ and the bigger picture in mind.

As for the second aspect of the chi-cycle system, the goal reassessment, it was something I just didn’t expect and I only discovered it as a result of what I now think of as my ‘priceless’ financial crash. For the first time in my life, I found myself in the situation of being able to start again from a position of inner luxury. Not that long ago my version of success was to be healthy and happy and have a couple of houses a holiday unit on the coast, a boat, a motorbike, a sports car a 4-wheel drive and a luxury sedan, as well as a big bank account. But over time, following the chi-cycle lifestyle generated internal changes that I wasn’t even aware of. It creates inner luxury and as that increases, your version of what constitutes outer luxury decreases. For me a comfortable house and car now feels luxurious. If you follow the chi-cycle long enough, your need to achieve material goals definitely changes. Part of this is because the chi-cycle creates a better balance of yin and yang. It was a deep-seated need to prove that I wasn’t a hopeless drug-addicted loser that triggered my initial desire for material success, but regardless of what kicked it off, I’d secretly revel in the deadlines, goals, caffeine, acceleration and excitement of the yang success world. It is highly addictive because the more yang you get the more you need. You can’t do ‘yin’ anymore. So nothing can rein in your urge to keep going, keep achieving, and there is no ‘space’ or time to see what you are really doing to yourself. I now believe this yang addiction is a worse addiction than drugs and it has a higher mortality rate than drugs. I will be permanently grateful for discovering the chi-cycle and for my financial collapse (funnily enough it was the research for the chi-cycle book that contributed to the collapse, so maybe there was a master-plan in play) because it freed me from the ‘yang trap’. I finally appreciate yin. I can even watch Eckhardt Tolle YouTube videos! Once the passivity of his delivery would have irritated me, but I enjoy it now. The chi-cycle lifestyle also changes your perception of time. In traditional Chinese medicine time is not a dimension it is organic – it is an extension of our organs and linked directly to bodily functions. As you follow the chi-cycle your organs change and you gain time – it reverses the aging process. The chi-cycle system is the ultimate success strategy. It creates ‘heaven on earth’ through building outer and inner wealth together.

In my clinic I am now regularly seeing female clients who are sexually dissatisfied because their husbands or partners no longer want sex with them. At the same time, I treat large numbers of male clients who are internet porn users and no longer feel like having sex with their wives or girlfriends. This is an historically unprecedented situation. Back in the day you could buy a Penthouse or Playboy magazine, not purely for their excellent articles, but it was rare to find anyone who preferred that experience to a human sexual encounter. This is one side-effect of internet porn usage that is problematical but the other is the physical, spiritual and emotional implications of exchanging chi or energy with an electronic stimulus.

These problems are going to increase because internet porn viewing is increasing dramatically. A recent study from the University of Sydney found that 70 percent of men and 30 percent of women already access it, and it is highly addictive. But internet porn usage is such an emotionally loaded topic that it is hard to find a non-judgemental analysis of its effects. When I bring up the subject with women their comment is: men that ‘do that’ must be ‘sad and lonely’. Men make comments such as male internet porn users are ‘afraid of intimacy’. Any response is automatically judgemental. So, as with the drug issue, the first step is to find a neutral position to be able to look at it from. Traditional Chinese medicine is the perfect vehicle for this. A healthy sex life is considered an important part of health and over centuries the Chinese physicians documented the symptoms of excessive sex and lack of sex and arrived at guidelines for how much sex you should have depending on your age and state of health. But they never envisaged the development of internet porn and its implications. I went on-line to check it out (as research of course) wondering what has changed and why it is so compelling for so many people, male and female. Physiologically, the visual stimulation of internet porn is instant. The viewer is immediately triggered on a primal level and for men (as I can only speak for men in this instance) the urge to see that through to ejaculation is almost irresistible. Afterwards you want to do it again. And you can because it is so easy. This aspect of internet porn has contributed to the development of the latest addiction - internet porn addiction.

I recently treated a male ‘internet porn addict’ who I will call Steve, an intelligent, friendly, good-looking guy in his mid thirties with a pretty wife and a couple of kids. For him it all began when he received pornographic images on his phone and by email from friends. This practice is endemic. I have guys sending me this stuff all the time without any encouragement on my part. For my client this was like the marijuana of the porn world, it led to one or two curious sessions at work viewing internet porn, of ‘trying’ the harder drugs, but he soon found himself wanting to do it again, and then more and more frequently. He got to the point where he purchased a small laptop computer, basically as a sex toy. It had wifi access so he could get on-line easily and untraceably and he was able to duck into the toilets at work and satisfy his need. He was doing this several times a day and rarely having sex with his wife. He felt weird about it, because they had had a great sex life before, but said he ‘couldn’t get away from it’. He started viewing porn on-line at home late at night after his wife went to sleep. She surprised him doing this a couple of times and felt angry, betrayed and rejected. She couldn’t understand how he could ‘do that to her’ or why he didn’t want to have sex with her. She would tell him that the girl he was looking at was someone’s daughter, and how did that make him feel? She thought this alone would be enough to make him stop. She wanted the computers out of the house or filters put on them so he couldn’t access this material, and for him to swear to never look at internet porn again. She joined a group trying to get internet porn banned. But this is like trying to ban drugs, it is not a solution, it is suppression and the attraction is resting not resolved.

From my perspective as a chi cycle therapist and my experiential and theoretical interest in addiction, the problem is not internet porn (or drugs), the problem is we have senses. Internet porn activates the senses. This makes you feel alive and energised – how we are all supposed to be feeling all the time. I believe it is normal to be stimulated by sexual imagery and natural to want to follow up on that stimulation. Many internet porn viewers, male and female, want to continue the feeling of heightened sexual stimulation so add drugs like ice which allow them to maintain that state for up to 18 hours straight. I think it’s the right idea to want to hold states of heightened awareness but drugs and internet porn are not a sustainable way to go about it. Our senses were given to us by the creator, they are divine, our job is to work with them by putting our desire for sensory stimulation in the context of the universal consciousness. We are here to evolve and uniting the stimulation of our senses with the universal mind is how we do this.

For Steve it wasn’t the internet porn that was the problem, it was that he had not been trained to interact correctly with the overwhelming sensory stimulus. None of us have. In terms of his ‘addiction’ step one was to be able to look at internet porn but not climax as it is climaxing that represents the loss of control. Climaxing to internet porn is an energetic exchange with an electric circuit. Your actions are not ‘supported’ so you lose energy in the exchange and don’t feel in control of life. Using internet porn to satisfy your sexual needs is like creating an individual or separate energy circuit that loops within your own mind and body and depletes your organs. We are designed to have our sexual activities linked with the universal energy field. This allows us to access powerful universal forces and it nourishes our organs and spirit. I suggested Steve take up chi cycle lifestyle changes because it is this that provides the tools to stop getting ‘sucked in’. Living the chi cycle allows you to train in and experience the union of stimulation with the universal energy forces. It’s a reference point to something better and in any addiction scenario, you always go for the better substance. The key to freedom is repetition of chi cycle living. If you get stuck in the internet porn cycle, and set up your own loop, what can happen (and I have other cases where I have seen this) is a desensitisation to certain types of pornographic imagery and the need for more extreme types of stimulation and material that is more disturbing and dehumanising. Internet porn is an empty experience compared to what sex in harmony with chi cycle can offer so, if you live the chi cycle, you naturally lose interest in porn. If that happens to everyone it’s the end of internet porn.

Sex, like sleeping and eating, once the simple things in life that we all took for granted, are now becoming the complicated things. I have clients who use internet porn because they don’t feel they have the perfect bodies necessary to have the hot heavy exciting sex pitched to us all in movies and advertising campaigns. The myth that men want sex all the time is not helping either. Women then feel less desirable if their male partners don’t want to have sex with them, and men with a ‘yin’ constitution, which means they naturally have a low sex drive, feel inadequate for not wanting sex all the time. In fact well over half the men I treat these days are not interested in sex. Tiger Woods, the kind of ‘yang’ man that apparently does want sex all the time is becoming increasingly rare, and he ended up in a sex addiction clinic where a period of enforced celibacy was part of the treatment. I have to say, leaving all the ethics of his activities aside, I felt really sorry for him. He is a ‘yang’ man as any successful athlete is. Along with that all that natural ambition, drive and energy comes a naturally high sex drive. Filling it by sleeping around doesn’t mean you are addicted to sex, it means you are not understanding how to work with your own nature.

But getting back to the clients who no longer want sex, this is a direct result of depleted organs and blood from an unsustainable lifestyle. They just don’t have the time or energy for it. I hear this from men and women all the time. They simply ‘can’t be bothered’ having sex. In this context internet porn is the ‘takeaway’ of the sex world. Its fast and convenient. If you are feeling tired and lethargic and then get onto a porn site, you experience instant change and stimulation. Its effortless and to top it all off, its free. Just as millions of us turn to takeaway food, millions of us are turning to takeaway sex. But this is McSex. And, like McFood, its not deeply satisfying and it costs us energy. It all comes down to the way we live. We can’t ‘hand over’, we can’t sleep so we take medications and have McSleep. We have so much yang rising we can’t eat, food just doesn’t go down, so we turn to McFood. We don’t have the time or energy to have deep sexual experiences with our partners so now millions and millions of us are having McSex. We keep losing energy, we become imbalanced and all sorts of addictive and obsessive behaviours arise. This is all because we have lost touch with our universal support system, the mothership. We weren’t meant to do this on our own, none of it. We don’t want to become McPeople. We are designed for so much more, for the ultimate experience of our chi flowing in accord with powerful universal forces and a soul-awakening experience with all our senses permanently activated. Living the chi cycle opens the door to this incredible state.

The Chi-cycel is the ultimate medicine for our contemporary times to achieve a life of inner peace while looking and feeling really really good

http://twitter.com/jostsauer

Well, go and see the Trans2012 clinic in 66 Oxford st, Darlinghurst suite 3 level 1, ph:9331 2012 m:0411 12 2012

www.trans2012.com.au

Apart from following the Chi-cycle I recommend to visit Ervin Laszlo’s website. In particular check out the three part video by Jude Currivam available for download on his website. Happy browsing:

www.worldshift2012.org

Jost will share his experiences with miracle cases, from drug addiction to internet porn addiction, and reveals how to use the ancient Chi-cycle to transform contemporary cravings into strength, independence and happiness

Brisbane Saturday 8th May | Endeavour College

www.handsonhealth.com.au/AboutHOH