Compass of the Times 242

Creating Milestones

Keiko Takahashi

Those Who Continue to Live as They Always Have

How does the Study of the Soul view the reality of human life? Everyone is born into the actual world harboring aspirations. Yet, many people end up burying those aspirations and living in a way that is controlled by the conditions of life created by their upbringing.

We create a databank (storehouse of information) and a program (script of life), which are the bases for our feelings, thoughts, and decisions through birth and upbringing. We live our lives based on them. This underlying basis is called the Foundation of Life.

If a situation is similar to other occasions, we routinely feel and think in the same way, making the same judgments and actions. As if a circuit of automation (automatic control), when a stimulus arrives, the circuit automatically starts to turn and produces the same reaction. That is what can be called the basic state of our lives.

Most of the time we have been repeating the way of life that comes from our Foundation of how to live that we have created in our lives. In other words, we will continue to live as we have lived.

Of course, human beings are not machines. We constantly take in new encounters and events from which new ways of living may happen to emerge.

However, it is also true that most of the time, we repeat reactions that could be described as mechanical. This is why it is wonderful to go beyond that rut and bring out a new way of living for ourselves.

Milestones Transform Our Life

Sometimes, a way of life we have been repeating day after day changes drastically, as if we undergo an awakening.

These are times when that awakening occurs from facing a problem and reassessing how to view the situation. For example, when we change our perception of a problem from being caused by someone else, to being caused in part by our own shortcomings, our relationship with the world changes. Or, at the time when we suffer from the difficulties of being unable to do as we wish during trials, we listen to the callings and realize that this reality is encouraging our growth, our relationship with the world changes drastically. We are then able to strengthen our trust in the world.

Trials and problems are situations that do not let us live as we have lived. We must stop moving forward. But it is precisely because we come to a standstill that we can become a new self and receive an invitation to a new dimension.

In the process, we sometimes discover that a firm wish lives inside of us, even though we thought we had no wish, or we crack open the image of ourselves that we had previously assumed we were and begin to live freely by awakening to a new self, our Other Self.

When this happens, we can say that we have evolved our lives by going through the experience of facing trials and problems as milestones in our lives.

It is natural for us to encounter trials and difficulties in our lives. We cannot avoid them when we go through life.

What is important is whether we pass them without realizing anything, or make them milestones that lead us to the next stage in life. Think about what you are experiencing right now. I encourage you to remember to ask yourself if this should be a milestone in your life.

Welcoming the Season of Seminars

Beginning with the Youth Seminar during the Golden Week holidays in Japan in May, GLA holds four Age-Based Seminars.

For three days during the weekend, participants have a special time to concentrate on the practice of the Divine Truth and exchange with friends at Yatsugatake Inochi-no-Sato, a place of great natural beauty, full of greenery. It may not be the same as being on the edge of facing trials and problems under pressure, but it will be a precious three days that can truly become a milestone in life, where participants can open their minds to the great outdoors and look at their usual selves.

I ask those attending the seminar to talk to themselves and say, “Let’s experience this period as a milestone in my life!” It will surely make the three days even more intense. Even if you are not attending the seminar, I encourage you to use the weekends as a milestone to face yourself and your reality.

Editor’s Note:

1. Study of the Soul

The Study of the Soul is a system of theory and practice in which we seek a way of life by connecting the visible and invisible dimensions. In contrast to the Study of Phenomena, which science represents by dealing with the materialistic dimension, the Study of the Soul goes beyond that, dealing comprehensively with the materialistic dimension and the invisible dimension of the “mind” and “soul.” That is a principle that I have discovered from intensive studies of human beings and the individual life journeys of the many people whom I have met. By looking at the “soul, mind, and reality” as a whole, we observe human beings and hope to respond to every possible occasion.
(Excerpted from page 40 of How to Make Your Life the Best by Keiko Takahashi)

2. Listening to Callings

Each encounter, each event, is not something that happens to us by “chance or accident.” They come to us out of necessity, for a reason, and have meaning. When we call out this sensibility of the soul, when we make the soul our center of gravity, we are able to ask of even the most negative situation, “What is this encounter, this event, calling me to do?” We are able to step out on a new way of living by asking ourselves, “How can I change?”
(Excerpts from Reclaim Your Life: The Power to Survive the Time of the Unbelievable, pages 47-49 by Keiko Takahashi, currently available only in Japanese)

3. Your Other Self

In the analogy of a human being as an iceberg, the Other Self is the greater part of the iceberg hidden underwater, while the tip of the iceberg above water is our usual self. The Other Self is, so to speak, the Sage of the Soul. It is wise and has a holistic vision, bringing calm and accurate judgment. It leads us to feel, think, and act differently from our usual way of living. It rescues us from our doubts, helps us overcome our fears, brings us wisdom, and attracts a new future.
(Excerpted and edited from Your Other Self, pages 49 and 79-80 by Keiko Takahashi, currently available only in Japanese)

4. Age-Based Seminars

Just as nature’s four seasons (spring, summer, fall, and winter) are irreplaceable, all the seasons of life (the time when we are a child, adolescent, middle age, and elderly) emit a precious light that cannot be compared. We are born into the World of Phenomena (this world) through the Gate of Birth, enjoy the seasons of life, return to the World of Real Existence (the other world) through the Gate of Death, and will be born into this world again when the time is fulfilled. This is a new view of life, the cyclical view of humanity that cannot be seen from the linear view of life that begins with birth and ends with death. In Age-Based Seminars, participants can learn the secrets of fully living each season of life. Specifically, there is the Youth Seminar for adolescents (May), Frontier College and Heart Nursing School Joint Seminar for people of middle age (June), Hoshin College Seminar for seniors (end of May to June), and Kakehashi Seminar for parents and children (end of July to August).

5. Yatsugatake Inochi-no-Sato

The Yatsugatake Inochi-no-Sato is a training facility of GLA General Headquarters, where Age-Based Seminars and various training programs are held throughout the year and are familiar to many GLA members. It has various facilities, such as the Life Memorial Hall, which serves as the center of gravity for prayer in the facility, and a large auditorium that can accommodate 1,800 people.

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