# LANG

Compass of the Times 179

Compass of the Times 179

To Change

Keiko Takahashi


The Truth of Inner-Outer Unification

It has been a month since the beginning of the new year. I believe many of you are now entering the time when you need to take steps in advancing your goals for the new year in full force. This month, I would like to take up one of the Divine Truths that will support you on your path this year.

It is the principle of Inner-Outer Unification—one of the most fundamental Divine Truths in the Study of the Soul1.

Our inner mind and the reality that spreads outside of us are inseparably connected as one. The state of our thoughts and feelings is reflected upon our reality. Conversely, the reality we face has an influence on our mind.

This means that our state of mind, or our inner spiritual level, determines the quality of our reality. The more our state of mind deepens, the further we advance our steps in reality.

When we set goals or themes that we have never achieved and try to advance toward them, we are asked to cultivate and train our mind so that we can deepen our state of mind.

This indicates nothing but the fact that it will be challenging to realize goals or themes that we have not been able to achieve by merely continuing the steps we have taken in the same way as before.

Moreover, what is essential for making advanced steps and improved approaches that are different from those before, is for us to make inner changes and evolution within ourselves. The more we advance in our cultivation and training of our mind, the closer we come to achieving our goals and themes that we have targeted.

In other words, the evolution of reality is only possible when we achieve the evolution of our mind and the advancement of our spiritual level. This is what the Divine Truth teaches us.

Because of It, We “Change”

This is the reason why we need to change.

To change does not mean a simple change, nor to move something from right to left, nor to simply try a new method that is different from the past.

It means to change the way of feeling, thinking, and acting. It is the inner deepening and the evolution of the mind based on the Divine Truth.

Here exists our necessity to change.

If those who have held distrust toward society and the people around them “open up their minds,” only by doing so do their realities begin to show a completely different aspect. They themselves will experience a change in the world.

Those who have been engulfed by nihilism, thinking “It won’t work anyway” or “It’s meaningless,” can find the brilliance in the world when they “polish their minds.” It means that they become able to discover potentials that are originally inherent in things and people.

By deepening our state of mind and spiritual level, the reality we produce will advance to the higher level, to a better and more essential reality.

What Supports the True “Change”

However, it is actually not easy for those who have held distrust toward people and the world to make a new step forward into trusting them. This is because it is not that simple for them to think, “I will try to change myself.” Indeed, it is a significant change in the state of their mind to dissolve distrust that had become solid, like a conviction, and to believe in the credibility of the path of changing themselves.

The same can be said for those who have harbored nihilism to begin moving forward by thinking, “I will try to polish my mind.”

For a person to change in the true sense, something is necessary to support that person’s steps. I call it faith.

There is something that will help us nurture our faith, i.e., the power to trust people and the world, including ourselves.

It is the place where one can genuinely feel the breaths of the Great Existence or God; the place where one can believe in the glow of each soul and the reality that will appear in the future although it is invisible at the moment.

That place is the GLA community where people interact with one another based on the perspective of life and human beings as a soul; the place filled with abundant practices and changes. I believe that this community is where we can gain great power for each person’s evolution.

2019.1.29

Editor’s Note

1. The Study of the Soul

It is the perspective that grasps our lives from the dimension of the soul. It also refers to the system of the truth, the Divine Truth, that permeates every aspect of the human soul and the world. As opposed to the study of phenomena that is directed at the tangible world, the Study of the Soul is an investigation of all things, including the formless and intangible world (excerpted and summarized from page 3 of The Reason Why You Were Born as You).