Let’s Go Home to the House of Life – 4

(Continued from last time)

The Second Step to Graduating from Being Lost in Your Heart

A moment ago I said the first step to graduating from being lost in your heart is to keep up relaxed breathing the whole time you’re awake, didn’t I?

In the next stage, to make a consciousness that isn’t caught up in anything or anyone your natural recognition, you practice so that you can think and say “Thank you so much” to everything.

The people who listen to what we say are generally the kind of people called good people, so they’re all people who can feel “how grateful I am” for the blessings of nature and for all living things, and who can say “Thank you so much.”

But if you observe very closely, gratitude within human relationships isn’t expressed very much.

Like or dislike, getting along or not getting along, and even, depending on the mood of the moment, cursing at the very people who are dear to them.

Whether you feel embarrassed saying “Thank you so much” or feel resistance like “I can’t say it to that person,” set those personal preferences aside and try practicing saying as many “Thank you so much”es as you can the whole time you’re awake.

Here too, as usual, set a limit of three weeks, and during that time, think “how grateful I am” about everything and everyone, and say “Thank you so much” clearly, face to face.

Then there will be no one you find difficult and no one you dislike.

Once that happens, it’s as if seventy percent of the pain of living has disappeared.

In many cases, the greatest suffering in life is worry about relationships, so if you think about it a little, you can imagine how much easier it would be to live if that disappeared, can’t you?

About the Fact That “the Feelings You Have about Others Are the Figure of Your Own Heart Reflected in a Mirror”

I’ve told you before that the world you call “this world” is a mirrored world where, wherever you look, front, back, left, right, up, or down, there’s nothing but mirrors, haven’t I?

People who live bound by the common sense of the past see the figure of their own heart reflected in that mirror, mistake it for the other person’s problem, and go on about good and bad, like and dislike.

Here, let me add a note about “the feelings you have about others are the figure of your own heart reflected in a mirror.”

It’s that when thoughts of assumption, fixation, attachment, or snap judgment ache and react, that is “the figure of your own heart reflected in a mirror.”

When that’s not the case, for example, when you think something but can let it flow smoothly by without minding it, when your emotions don’t react, when you soon forget it and don’t drag it along, you’re simply thinking about a plain fact, and it has nothing to do with the figure of your heart.

If you don’t know this and try to do “Ah, it’s a mirror. It’s me” with absolutely everything, then on the contrary, no matter how much you look at yourself you won’t understand, you’ll worry needlessly, and your heart can’t rest.

So just think simply: “When my emotions ache, the cause is in me.”

Then look at what you are doing to yourself and what is being done to you by yourself.

There’s never only a victim in your heart, and there’s never only someone doing harm.

Both selves exist as a set.

That’s why your thoughts ache.

Because the balance between these selves (consciousnesses) of yin and yang, plus and minus, had been lost, you got angry at others, got knocked down and felt low, resented and hated, envied and was jealous.

The other day I showed you this in numbers, didn’t I?

Keeping the balance of your consciousness neutral is what I always call “a field of view that looks down on the whole,” the bird’s-eye view.

Then angel wings sprout on the backs of the unresolved thoughts in your heart, both plus and minus, and they return to heaven.

That means the unresolved thoughts within you are released.

As you keep repeating that, a deep appreciation for “life” wells up, and you can spend each moment in a state of wholehearted gratitude.

In other words, so that you can feel “gratitude to life,” the source of the power that moves yourself, the most important thing of all, it’s good to practice so that you can say “Thank you so much” to anyone in this mirrored world.

Because on the surface it looks like you’re thanking other people, but in reality you’re thanking “the Light of Life.”

(To be continued)