The Secret of Shambhala: In Search of the Eleventh Insight Read Online Free Page A

in my bedroom, just to see Yin’s reaction. But I decided against it. Better
     to just watch Yin closely, I thought, and see how things felt at the airport.
    At the ticket desk, I found that a seat had indeed been purchased in my name for a flight to Lhasa. I looked around and tried
     to feel out the situation. Everything seemed normal. Yin was smiling, obviously in a good mood. Unfortunately the ticket clerk
     was not. She could speak only a little English and was very demanding. When she asked for my passport, I became ever more
     irritated and snapped back at her. At one point she stopped and glared at me, as though she was going to refuse to issue the
     tickets altogether.
    Yin quickly stepped in and talked to her in a calm voice in her native Nepalese. After a few minutes her demeanor began to
     change. She never looked at me again, but she spoke pleasantly to Yin, actually laughing at something he said. A few minutes
     later we had our tickets and boarding passes and were sitting at a small table in a coffee shop near our gate. There was the
     strong smell of cigarettes everywhere.
    “You have much anger,” Yin said. “And you don’t use your energy very well.”
    I was taken aback. “What are you talking about?”
    He looked at me with kindness. “I mean, you did nothing to help the woman at the counter with her mood.”
    I immediately knew what he was getting at. In Peru the Eighth Insight had described a method of uplifting others by focusing
     on their faces in a particular way.
    “You know the Insights?” I asked.
    Yin nodded, still looking at me. “Yes,” he said. “But there is more.”
    “Remembering to send energy is not that easy,” I added defensively.
    In a very deliberate tone, Yin said, “But you must realize that you were already influencing her with your energy anyway,
     whether you know it or not. The important thing is how you set your… field of… of…” Yin was struggling to find the English
     word. “Field of
intention,
” he said finally. “Your prayer-field.”
    I looked at him hard. Yin seemed to be describing prayer in the same way the dark-haired man had earlier.
    “What are you talking about exactly?” I asked.
    “Have you ever been in a room of people where the energy and mood were low, and then someone comes in who lifts everyone’s
     energy immediately, just by entering the room? This person’s energy field goes out ahead of him or her and touches everyone
     else.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “I know what you mean.”
    His look penetrated me. “If you are going to find Shambhala, you must learn how to do this consciously.”
    “Shambhala? What are you talking about?”
    Yin’s face grew pale, exuding an expression of embarrassment. He shook his head, apparently feeling as though he had overstepped
     himself and let something out of the bag.
    “Never mind,” he said lowly. “It is not my place. Wil must explain this.” The line was forming to enter the plane, and Yin
     turned away and moved toward the ticket steward.
    I was wracking my brain, trying to place the word “Shambhala.” Finally it came to me. Shambhala was the mythical community
     of Tibetan Buddhist lore, the one that the stories about Shangri-La had been based on.
    I caught Yin’s eye. “That place is a myth… right?”
    Yin just handed the steward his ticket and walked down the aisle.
    O n the flight to Lhasa, Yin and I sat in different sections of the plane, giving me time to think. All I knew was that Shambhala
     was of great significance to Tibetan Buddhists, whose ancient writings described it as a holy city of diamonds and gold, filled
     with adepts and lamas—and hidden somewhere in the vast uninhabitable regions of northern Tibet or China. More recently, though,
     most Buddhists seemed to speak of Shambhala merely in symbolic terms, as representing a spiritual state of mind, not a real
     location.
    I reached over and pulled a travel brochure of Tibet from the pouch on the seat back,