The Empty Man
He has become one of the most reputed North American healers of our times and his knowledge about the manipulation of energy seems to be limitless. The excellence of his new healing system, The Light of Life, has captivated hundreds of people due to its regenerative and transformative power. Those who know him describe Howard Lee as a man capable of opening the doors to an unforgettable experience, beyond words. This coming November this peculiar “energy doctor” will visit our country for the first time to show us the power of a mind that says it has attained silence.
"A Chinese proverb says, A sifu for a day is equal to a father for a lifetime. Howard Lee is that kind of sifu: a teacher and guide towards the light. I am proud to have been one of his students.” ---Carlos Castaneda
I confess I wasn’t easy on him. When someone in the city of Los Angeles---a city which contains possibly the highest number of gurus, alternative movements and practitioners of the most diverse spiritual propositions in the world---mentions the name of a healer who “works miracles,” this happens far too often to be taken seriously. And if that person is also “the healer of the moment,” whose excellence is heard of through the grapevine, my fear of encountering one more “product” packaged by effective marketing increases. That is precisely what seemed to define the figure of Howard Lee at first glance: possibly one of the most sophisticated internal Kung Fu teachers of our time, the miracle man, the energy doctor, as he is described by the numerous people who have had the fortune of placing themselves in his hands. Too good to be true. Only when I was reviewing the documentation about his work in order to prepare the interview he had agreed to, did certain aspects of his path, which were at least unconventional, begin to reveal themselves. Of Chinese origin but a resident of the United States since adolescence, Master Lee trained under a mythic Kung Fu figure, professor Ben Low, and learned acupuncture under the guidance of one of the most important pioneers and disclosers of this millennium art in the West, doctor Kim Ju. Under the auspices of these heavyweights, Howard Lee dedicated himself for over 25 years to teaching Kung Fu and to the practice of acupuncture, attending to hundreds of people. He had not granted interviews during this entire time nor had he participated in any type of promotional activity, in spite of which his fame has only grown.
His has been a quiet labor which is now entering a new phase of promoters and multitudinous courses that are allowing him to divulge his knowledge to a larger number of people, but which of course has a price, and not just an economic one. Howard Lee has become someone famous, and I must acknowledge that I felt a certain morbid curiosity to know how this meteoric ascent had affected him personally.
But Howard Lee’s story undoubtedly has a moment of reflection, which for him happened in 1975. Accustomed to receiving a good number of people from the world of culture among his students, and like a good “Chinese person” with a fondness for discretion, Howard Lee did not know that among his enthusiastic apprentices was the elusive and mysterious Carlos Castaneda. And he would have gone on without knowing except for the fact that at a later time, Castaneda dedicated the book The Fire from Within to him with the eloquent words: “I wish to express my admiration and gratitude to Master Howard Lee, for having helped me to recover my energy and for teaching me an alternative path to abundance and well-being."
"It’s funny,” Howard Lee would confess to us later, “that people don’t believe that when Carlos Castaneda came to me in 1974, I had no idea who he was. I don’t feel that type of curiosity about the lives of people who I have contact with. He suffered from a health problem, and I helped him recover. Later he stayed on as a Kung Fu student for a number of years. When he published The Fire from Within, he brought it to me himself. I felt a bit embarrassed, because he was not obligated to acknowledge me that way. Later I read his books and I was impressed. We had many points in common, but his was a very different tradition than mine."
The truth is that Castaneda’s praise attracted people from all over the world to consult him, and who then wanted to export him to other countries. But Lee refused: “I was totally involved in the practice of healing,” he explains, “and I had not yet finished refining the system by which I could teach people to connect to the energy. It took a long time to determine the forms to access this knowledge and I actually was never interested in things like fame or fortune."
From emptiness to remembrance
Howard Lee greeted us in his Santa Monica office, an inviting and sober place where he carries out his daily healing sessions. He is an attractive man, with an intelligent look and a small but very robust build, gifted with that special flexibility that characterizes advanced practitioners of Kung Fu. His oriental features hide an indefinite age, camouflaged by an extraordinarily youthful and vital body. He radiates optimism and security and walks with an agile stride that barely touches the floor. Kung Fu is so much a part of his limbs that you could say that even when he is resting comfortably in his office chair he is still practicing it. “For many years,” he explains, “I have worked at this discipline intensely, but now I don’t have to do it. My body is at a peak. Its like a sword you must temper with fire and a thousand blows. But once it’s finished, you don’t have to do it anymore. That’s what has happened to me and what allows me to embark on other processes at this time."
He has a captivating smile which reappears continuously, and he talks up a storm. He is an excellent conversationalist who is able to create a climate of trust in his surroundings almost immediately. Although he doesn’t show off his knowledge, which he speaks of in broad and appealing terms, he undoubtedly masters the secrets of energy as only a Chinese person could. He is also extremely precise in his descriptions, with which he tries to encompass a universe which is intangible for most, but after listening to him you could say that for him is as familiar as his daily Kung Fu exercises: “People look for teachings, a teacher to guide them, someone who knows it all. But no one knows everything about energy, or of the reality of daily life. We all have different talents, and this is mine. I had never given interviews until now because I hadn’t felt the need to share what I know, and it is the energy itself which has made it possible for the change. I do not impose my points of view on anyone. People come to me with their own thought patterns, their own opinions. None of that is important. When these people directly experience the energy the whole process acquires meaning for them. It is not something rational. It is much more powerful"
The energetic change which is making it possible for Howard Lee to leave his Los Angeles stronghold to teach a class in Rome not long ago and to Barcelona this coming November, has much to do with Lee’s own personal process, which he defines as “progressive memory.” This is perhaps the most esoteric aspect of his persona, and when he attempts to explain it to us he looks towards the sky to search for adequate words with which to transcribe an experience which is hard to classify: “Let’s see, the healing system I utilize is something totally my own, I didn’t study it with anyone. Questions about healing with the use of energy will suddenly come to mind, and then in the simplest way possible, the answers come to mind as well. It’s as if I had remembered them, just like Mozart ’remembered’ whole pieces of music. I search for something and I find the answer. And at a certain moment I also remembered, I don’t know how to explain it, I remembered how to share this knowledge with others. So I began to do it unconditionally. Well, they invest their time and their money, but they only need to do it once. From then on they know how to apply it to their daily life and to benefit from this energy for healing or transformation. It is not something new, but I am presenting it in this reality, at this time, and in that sense it is new."
He has called his new and personal healing system “The Light of Life", a system he insists he did not learn from anyone but rather one which came from his own interior silence. “Most of the time people are thinking, but in my case, unless I am doing a particular thing, my mind is empty, like a computer turned off. There are people who have tried different types of meditation, but they don’t attain silence, because silence only becomes attainable when we have sufficient energy. And from that state of silence we access other forms of information, a sort of universal library. At 19 my mind became empty, and since then I began to access knowledge energetically."
Once and for all
They say he is gifted with an innate capacity for healing and that he has adapted his training and natural abilities toward the goal of transmitting energy in a simple and direct manner, creating health-promoting movement patterns. When someone performs them, whether they are sick or as students, the movements increase the self-regenerating power of the body in such a way that they can be used as a complement to other more conventional therapies. “I don’t reject conventional medicine,” he affirms. “The only objection I have is that sometimes it is not put to the service of the patients as it should be."
There are numerous testimonies to the effectiveness of his process. Psychologist John Selby, author of the book Conscious Healing and Kundalini Awareness, has recognized Howard Lee as “one of the few truly transcendent healers of our times, an active representative of a remarkable new healing energy, capable of generating not only rapid physical recovery, but also deep emotional and spiritual transformation. For any of us to receive energetic healing through him is a genuine blessing.” Another whose praises are no less effusive are the words of renowned North American art critic Amalia Mesa-Bains, when she affirms that “Master Lee offers the individual the possibility to reorganize their energy in ways that both heal and inspire. My work with him helped me survive a major illness, but more importantly it helped me to strengthen my creative spirit.” But what is truly surprising about his system is not the evaluation of numerous well-known people, but the simplicity and immediacy of the process Lee calls “energetic induction” (see picture) . He and his many followers agree that it is enough to attend just one of his workshops to connect with the energy. Suspiciously easy? That is not Lee’s opinion: “I understand that it might raise doubts, but my closeness to the energy is different than other more traditional formulas. In my opinion, in the handling of different energetic systems, no one has been able to totally dispense with the trivialities in terms of interpretation, gestures or movements. But when we focus only on the physical technique, the whole process becomes full of extraneous elements. It’s really only about the energy! I am able to provide that access, of creating an energetic field necessary for people to connect with the Light of Life. And from then on they can access it themselves for the rest of their lives. People who have attended my workshops can attest to this. It is something really powerful, beyond reason."
The benefits of the technique appear to be endless: balance, health, creativity, performance, vitality, longevity and a long list of personal achievements that his students have affirmed they have achieved. “Well, of course there are limits,” recognizes its creator. “For example, if someone suffers from an infectious disease, it is more complicated to access their energy body than if they are healthy, but this energy helps them to reestablish the immune system and complements their healing. We have proved this successfully with post-operative procedures, chronic pain, neurological and respiratory problems, sexual dysfunctions, emotional disorders and many other illnesses. It is this effectiveness that makes so many professionals attend the workshops."
At least it appears to have worked with him. Howard Lee has not been chronologically young for a long time, but he continues to be youthful in his vitality. His body is his best testimony. “It is not necessary to do tedious exercises,” he suggests mischievously when we comment about his optimum physical appearance. “We just nourish ourselves with this energy, with this life source. We Chinese say a person ages as they loose the connection between their physical body and their energetic body, and this causes a lack of energy. At about age 50 people start to experience this loss of energy and the body loses cohesion, it expands and continues doing so until it collapses. My students have been able to prove that contact with this energy reverses the process, something changes in their body. When they come out of a session it looks like they’ve had a lifting"
His trust in his system allows him to face his upcoming trip to Europe without fears: “The language is not a problem, neither is rational thinking.” In Spain, he is expected to do a number of induction sessions, which for him is the most important aspect of his work. “I will also do a Kung Fu workshop; I hadn’t planned on doing it, but they insisted on it. And there will also be private healing sessions, maybe for a day or two.” He had been generous with his time and we left his Santa Monica office with the feeling that we had met someone really interesting. It is beyond our ability to confirm the value of a method we have not experienced, although there are too many enthusiastic testimonies to be ignored. His presence, and that is something we have been able to attest to, creates an atmosphere of serenity and above all he opens a world of unsuspected possibilities. “If a normal individual were able to achieve a few seconds of total silence,” he commented to us during the interview, “they could do truly inconceivable, miraculous things.” He, who claims to be empty, should know.
Inset:
The induction of energy
All you need to do is be there. The rest is up to Howard Lee, who describes the experience of the induction of energy as “an immediate process” in which all the student has to do is open up and experience the energetic field created by him. Afterwards, each person interprets their experience in a different way. Some say it has modified their character or improved their health, others register new bodily sensations and those who are most sensitive also experience different energetic phenomena.
But none of that matters. For Master Lee, even the movement patterns, which are very simple and only last a few seconds, are accessories, so those who have problems with mobility can still benefit from the induction. “The Energy is very simple,” assures Lee, who has made an effort to impregnate all of his work with simplicity. “You don’t need to believe anything. Simply allow this energy to affect you and you will have found an instrument to improve your life, your health and your creativity. With the energy everything is easy and instantaneous. In fact, what takes up most of our time is attending to the demands of our rational mind, which demands endless explanations."
