Excerpts from Recent Lectures and Guidance

Now, I would like you to bring to mind a problem you are facing. How do you all feel in the face of such a trial? You have been faced with it for a long time and it is causing a gloomy atmosphere, feelings of irritation, neglect making you feel “why has it turned out this way”, or avoidance where you feel “I do not want to look at the problem,” or “I want to put off thinking about it because it just makes me tired.” At such times, please take a good look at the state of your heart’s energy. What condition is the energy in your heart, the force of your initiative in?

When we think “Oh no, what a pain, it’s difficult to handle, I don’t want to think about it…,” you are laughing now, but it isn’t a laughing matter. (Audience laughs) This is how the inner energy leaks out in streams from the realm of our initiative. When we feel “I can’t do it anymore, it’s my husband’s fault, it’s because of the way of my boss …,” a lot of energy flows out and we feel a lack of motivation to do things. Was it others or ourselves who made that happen? Our hearts belong to us. And as you have just seen, energy escapes from our heart. No matter what the reason may be that condition is indeed the condition of your heart when you have lost your initiative.

When we think “It is because the problem I’m facing now is difficult, it is because that person won’t take action…, there is no way that I have any initiative in this situation,” we are putting the blame on the situation or human relations for losing our initiative. However, no matter what is being blamed, the energy that is being lost is our own doing. We ourselves, not other people or things around us, are the ones who threw it out, discarded it or gave it up and leaked our energy out.

The truth is that the various problems about the situation or human relations we have that make us lose our initiatives are none other than a trigger. They are nothing more than excuses. In the end, it is we ourselves who determine that outcome, whether automatically or unconsciously. We are the ones who have fallen into that state.

This holds true also in the case of Mr. Kobayashi’s practice report yesterday. In the circumstances where he cannot keep from feeling “I have no right to choose,” he worked very hard to find things that he could do. Even without any conclusive, complete structure, he tried to find if there was something in the previous experimental models that he could make use of, or just looked for something he could do.” Energy isn’t leaking out at times like this.

When our hearts are activated and are seeking the path in ways such as, “I wonder if there is something I can do, to whom I should make a proposal, in what way should I do so, who can be my partner to work with me, what kind of a path can I open up, what way of mindset should I have,” that means we are taking the initiative.

Now everyone, when we are faced with trials, what should we do in order to regain our initiative instead of losing it? That indeed is what we learned yesterday, about accepting the fact that “Trials are Callings” and to confront them head on with the mindset “I will Change Myself.”

June 22, 2014: 2014 Frontier College and Heart Nursing School Joint Seminar at GLA Yatsugatake Inochi-no-Sato