How to Transform Your Unadorned Self into Life-Consciousness Just as It Is (Part 1)

★Let’s live without putting on a front

People often tend to put on a front, trying to make it look as if they’re a certain way when they really aren’t.

To give a few examples of trying to look good to others: “In this kind of situation I have to show gratitude,” “In this scene I should behave lovingly,” “In this case I have to apologize solemnly,” and so on.

When you look from the outside at people keeping the muscles of their hearts tense like that, even those whose resident thoughts aren’t particularly fine may look fairly loving on the surface, or seem like people with grateful hearts, or appear to be apologizing properly, right?

If you find yourselves caught up in such thoughts and deeds of putting on a front, it’s good to reflect deeply on the fact that even if you can fool the eyes of those around you, you can never deceive your own “true heart.”

If your consciousness keeps staying in that state of self-deception, the clouds covering the sky of your heart grow thicker and thicker, and, like the fable of the boy who cried wolf, the lies you pile up do no good for many people, yourself included, and can end up making your own life painful.

So that doesn’t happen, you need to guide yourself firmly so that, from everyday life on, you think, speak, and act with a bare heart without any decoration or pretense, and become someone who naturally thinks, speaks, and does only good things.

For that, in times that are the opposite of the examples at the start… when your heart isn’t tense (when you’re relaxed and not paying attention), train yourself to think, speak, and act only on good things.

Human thought patterns are formed by habit, and they can be changed by steady effort.

When you suddenly have to respond to an emergency, or deal on the spot with a situation with no mental preparation at all, those habitual thoughts pop up and appear as that person’s words and actions.

And people for whom deceiving themselves at every turn has become a habit don’t have the core of their heart in the divine realm, so their words and actions end up flustered and makeshift, or they coat themselves in lies and falsehoods, or they can’t get through difficult places by their own strength. Then they resent or hate others, pity themselves or despair, or scheme to somehow protect the self that tells lies.

Such sights are painful to watch, aren’t they?

You could say those sights show that their journey of making the truth their own and expressing it is still at a stage yet to come. (To be continued)