Compass of the Times 220

Reexamining the “Routines of Life”

Keiko Takahashi

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A Time to Transcend the Flow of Time

Time flies so fast, and we are already halfway through the year.

How has your year been? Now that we are at the halfway point, I would like to ask you to stop and look back at the progress you have made so far and implement Wisdom at this midpoint to move on to the second half of this year.

In order to work on that initiative this month, let us look at a mindset that have dominated our lives; that is, “Today exists like yesterday, and tomorrow will exist like today.”

This is a mindset that many people have in their daily lives without even being aware of it. It is no exaggeration to say that if we are ruled by such a mindset, our reality is always the same in a flow of time that never changes.

That is why many people are perplexed by the difficulties and trials that can abruptly arise one day. They feel as if such hardships have suddenly fallen upon them.

In other words, this is how much we think that our ordinary lives will continue in the same way, day after day. However, it is not only the passage of time that continues in the same way.

Life Is Full of Things That Are Routine and Natural

It is not an understatement to say that our reality, our life, is made up of so many things that are just common routine and that we are not even consciously aware of.

Take, for example, the family member we meet first when we wake in the morning and the way we interact with them, or perhaps the state of our workplace and the way we work there and how we measure our performance, or alternatively the way we interact with others. Somehow, they have all become mundane realities that we feel, “This is the way it is.” Is it not so?

The participants of the “One Day One Sheet” Special Seminar learned about the Two Doors. Being born into the World of Phenomena (this world), most people unknowingly absorb the way of life of the world of the left door, the materialistic view of humanity and the world, as the routine and natural way of living.

For example, when we meet people, we look at them according to their place of employment, position, or title. The same is true when we think of the value of things in terms of money.

The way we feel and perceive things that are unique to us has been acquired and become routine and natural to us at some point in our lives without awareness.

It is the sum of the Three Streams of Influence (family, place, and era) that we have absorbed as part of our upbringing. It includes the ideas, ways of life, the conventional wisdom, assumptions, customs, and values that have flowed into us from our parents, family members, the community, industry, and the time we live in. They are so deeply ingrained in the minds of those who have taken on the Three Streams of Influence that they vanish from awareness.

Unless something happens to overturn them, the routine of life becomes the default state of our daily lives.

If we are buried in the default way of our life, can we really call it our own life?

A Way of Life That Reexamines the “Routines of Life”

We are surrounded by things that are routine and natural to us. They seem to surround us like a brick wall, separating us from the world itself.

In order to transcend these barriers and live by touching the world itself, we must first and foremost reexamine what is a common routine to us.

How great a change would it be to transform our conventional way of life, in which we have always responded to the common routine without question, into a way of life in which we reexamine our everyday lives? It could be tantamount to being born as a new person in mid-life. This step is no less courageous than the steps of any brave hero.

The fact that the Study of the Soul has clarified the conditions called the Three Streams of Influence means that the study focuses on a way of life that questions the everyday pattern of life.

This month, I would like you to take a moment to look at your own routines of life and question them.