Do you believe in fairytales? I didn't before initiation, but I do now because I'm living a fairytale. The title of my fairytale is "The Sleeping Beauty."

By brother initiate Gary Niklason, Tokyo, Japan
(Originally in English)

My story begins in Holland where I was teaching at an international school. Each year I would lead a group of students from Holland to Scotland to study the history, culture, and wildlife of the Highlands and the Orkney Islands. While leading such a group along with their chaperones, I happened to stop in Edinburgh on June 5, 1999, the same day that Supreme Master Ching Hai was giving a lecture there.

I passed by a group of smiling people handing out brochures and they offered me one, but I said "no" and kept walking. I had important business to take care of. I had to change Dutch Guilders into British Pounds and I was looking for the best exchange rate. I was too busy to be bothered.

But my work took me back and forth past these friendly people again and again, and I wondered, "Why are they so happy?" As I crossed the street one of them put a brochure in my hand. For some reason, I did not throw the flyer away when I reached the other side of the street, but instead looked at it. The picture on the front captivated me, and I thought I recognized the lady. I read the entire brochure front to back as I continued my walk. At the bottom of the text it said, "Keep this flyer for your blessing," so I did.

I couldn't attend Supreme Master Ching Hai's lecture that day, but I held onto the brochure and read it over and over again as I continued the study trip. I showed it to my wife when I returned to Holland and to my surprise she was interested too. We then telephoned the Dutch contact person and made the two and a half-hour drive from our house to the Amsterdam Center to get information about the Quan Yin Method. We had doubts about whether we could be vegetarian for the rest of our lives, so we decided to give it a three-month trial. We returned to our home with a sample booklet, a videotape, and the book "I Have Come to Take You Home."

Being vegetarian was not as difficult as we had anticipated, but meditation was a struggle. Previously, we had read some books about meditation but found it difficult to sit for fifteen minutes, much less two and a half hours. In October of 1999 we learned the Convenient Method in Amsterdam. Suddenly our meditation seemed easier, and thirty minutes were no longer difficult. Something inside us had changed. We decided quickly that we wanted full initiation. The contact person told us that Master Ching Hai would be giving a lecture in Istanbul, Turkey on November 20 and we could go there for full initiation.

Istanbul, Turkey seemed very far away and we thought it would cost a fortune to go there. We checked on flights to Istanbul and they were terribly expensive. We were about to give up when I remembered a Turkish travel agency nearby. We tried that and to our surprise we found an amazing deal. It cost less than US$150 per person for our flight and two nights in a three-star hotel. What a bargain! Another person on the same tour couldn't believe our price. His plane ticket alone cost him more than what we paid for our total package.

We recognized these blessings but the greatest blessing was yet to come. Our initiation awakened the sleeping beauty inside of us. We all have the kingdom of God within us, but it takes a Master to awaken this sleeping beauty. Initiation itself cost me nothing, yet it is the greatest gift I have ever received. Now I understand why those lovely people handing out the brochures in Scotland were all smiling!

A year after our initiation, we were looking for a special Christmas vacation to further our spiritual growth. One morning after meditation I told my wife, "I know where we're going for Christmas." She asked me where and was shocked when I said Formosa. As I thought about it, so was I. We were halfway around the world from Formosa. We didn't know anyone there and it was only a week before Christmas. But I continued to insist that we needed to go to Formosa.

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