Compass of the Times 254

To Use Our Mind

Keiko Takahashi

Humans Who Try to Minimize Their Efforts

The month of May is known as the season of life. In this time in which refreshing breezes will blow, how are you planning to live this season of growth?

The season of life and growth is a time when all living things have a great potential for change. If that is so, this month let us consider the importance of using the mind given to each person so that we can expand our possibilities.

I suggest this because we have a tendency to immediately try to decrease our efforts (a labor-saving mode) in life.

The moment we think we understand something, we tend to stop trying to learn more about it.

Once we have an idea that “this is the way it is,” we are no longer willing to look at it any other way.

It is human nature to repeat the way of understanding and the way of life upon which we once decided. We do this so that the energy saved by a labor-saving mode can be used to live life more deeply. It will come to nothing, however, if we end up falling into a labor-saving mode for things that we should not do so.

The way we walk, brush our teeth, clean, and cook can become habits through repetition and labor-saving, but the way we face each encounter and situation, and the way we relate to others, should not be done in a labor-saving mode.

Use Our Energy and Our Mind

We are always urged to face encounters and events that come our way as if we were facing them for the first time. Even similar events or repeated encounters contain realities that we have not yet experienced.

Facing each encounter or event is always a new experience. It is entrusted a Blueprint¹ that has never been realized before.

We will never be able to extract the Blueprints from the “I already know” or “this is the way it is” attitude. We will never be able to uncover the new essence or potential that lies within.

Facing encounters and events with sincere feelings, we approach them with a prayerful mind, thinking, “Please guide me to a Blueprint that I should draw from this encounter or this event.” Only then, can we be prepared to confront each situation.

Before meeting or getting involved in a situation, it is important, above all, to ask for the Blueprint that is hidden there as if we politely knock on the door.

In order for us to approach the Blueprint and realize it, it is absolutely essential that we put our energy into it, think hard about it, and use our minds.

Learn How to Use Our Mind Based on the Divine Truth

Beginning in early May, the Yatsugatake Inochi-no-Sato (training facility of the GLA General Headquarters) will host seminars for different generations², starting with the Youth Seminar for adolescents.

In late May, the Hoshin College Seminar for seniors will be held, followed in June by the Frontier College and Heart Nursing School Joint Seminar for people of middle age, and in August by the Kakehashi Seminar for all generations, especially children. The Yatsugatake Missionary Committee Seminar will be held with a focus on the committee members in September, bringing this year’s seminars in Yatsugatake to a close.

A common feature of the age-based seminars, which are intensive studies of the Divine Truth, is that participants spend three days rooted in the Divine Truth, away from the rhythms of daily life, in the great outdoors at the foot of the Yatsugatake Mountains.

During the study sessions, participants have meetings with their peers from time to time, and through repeated discussions on various topics, they deepen their bond with each other. This is a time to learn different ways of using the mind through looking into the mind in line with the Divine Truth and expressing feelings and realizations to each other.

The true joy of life lies in living with the full use of the whole mind that has been given to us. The seminars are surely the best ways to open a new beginning of this process. Let us start a new use of mind at the seminars.

Editor’s Note

1. Blueprint

Originally, a blueprint is referred to as plans showing how to build something, such as a building or a machine. From there, it has come to refer to diagrams or plans for just about anything or for diagrams of the future that ought to be. It is the reality that we seek to realize and aspire to achieve. In the Study of the Soul, the term is also imbued with the meanings of the Idea (ideal form) hidden in all things and the promise made with the Great Existence, with God. (Excerpted from page 105 of The Golden Path by Keiko Takahashi)

2. 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).

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