To Support the Refinement of Spiritual and Material Vibrations – 3

How to Tell Harmony from Disharmony Within

I said that by looking at the state of your heart “when you hold some impression of the state of the world you sense with your five senses or of other people’s words and deeds,” it becomes possible to tell harmony from disharmony within yourself. Let me explain what that means.

It is very simple: you just observe the state of your thoughts about the words and deeds of others or the movements of the world that touched your five senses, and see whether those thoughts are snagging on your heart or not.

That alone lets you tell whether you are in harmony or disharmony within.

If you can just let it flow by, “Oh, is that so,” or let it pass without paying it much attention, that is a state of not being snagged. In that case, it can be regarded that there is no seed of disharmony related to that person’s words and deeds or that event within you, so there is no particular need to pay attention to it.

On the other hand, if some movement of the heart arises when you encounter that person’s words and deeds or that event, such as resistance or impulse, anger or sadness, joy or sympathy, that means there was a snag in your thoughts.

In that case, the cause of the snag lies within you, so you need to turn the feelings you had about that person’s words and deeds or that event back toward yourself and look at them again through inner reflection.

As for how to turn them back and look at them, while you are not yet used to it, I think “inner reflection” is the easiest way to find “the cause that was actually within yourself,” so let me describe that method.

The Steps of Inner Reflection

1. Sitting in seiza (kneeling) or on a chair, straighten your spine, relax your shoulders, draw your chin in slightly, close your eyes, and place your hands on your knees in the Nyorai IN (the Nyorai IN is an IN that connects you directly with the source of your own life. Keep this IN formed during inner reflection. To form it, make a ring with the thumb and index finger of each hand, link the two rings like a chain, and rest them lightly on your knees with the palms facing the sky. It doesn’t matter which palm is on top, and either thumb may be on top when you make the rings.)
2. Slowly breathe out all the “stale air” that has been left sitting at the bottom of your lungs for a long time (purse your lips as if whistling, and breathe out weakly and slowly through the slight opening in the middle of your lips, aiming to take 30 seconds to a minute. If you can’t breathe out that long, do it within a comfortable range.)
3. When you think, “I can’t breathe out any more,” make one more effort: pulling in your lower belly as if lifting your internal organs and tightening your buttocks, breathe out the remaining air completely (if possible, repeat this two or three times).
4. When your lungs are empty, your body will naturally begin taking in oxygen even without trying to breathe in, so once you begin inhaling naturally, consciously intend to draw in only the last part fully, and fill your lungs with fresh oxygen.
5. After breathing in fully, hold your breath for about 7 seconds while counting “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.”
6. After 7 seconds, breathe out completely over twice that number of seconds.
7. After that, repeat [breathe in for 14 seconds – hold for 7 seconds – breathe out for 14 seconds] until the end (when breathing in, adjust so that you breathe in as fully as possible within that number of seconds, and when breathing out, adjust so that you breathe out completely within that number of seconds. *Adjust the number of seconds within a range that is comfortable for you.)
8. Example: Think something like, “I was told by so-and-so, ‘You’re an idiot,’ and I reacted reflexively, ‘You’re the idiot,’ and afterward feelings of anger and sadness welled up in my heart. But the fact that I got snagged like that means the cause was within me. All right, let me find the courage to look into the darkness deep in my heart.” (At that time, imagining yourself as the light of a lighthouse shining on a dark sea, gaze at a single point in the center, straight ahead behind your closed eyelids, and quietly perceive what is in your heart.)
9. When you use your consciousness while focusing it like this, even if you can’t see or hear anything spiritually, in the realm of intuitive flashes you’ll begin to sense that there existed both a self acting like the one doing harm, making fun of another self, and a self acting like the victim, sulking after being made fun of by yourself.
10. At that moment, there will be a movement of thought that settles into place, like “Ah, so that’s how it was” or “So this was the cause,” so fully savor the feelings both of them have had until now, as if seeing off those unresolved thoughts as they return to heaven.
11. Before long, as the sky of your heart clears, the waves of those thoughts passing through your mind will thin out as if fading away, so when you feel “It’s okay now,” open your eyes and end the inner reflection.

* The total time differs each time, so I can’t say for certain, but I think it is roughly 5 to 10 minutes.
* What you think in step 8 will differ from time to time.

(To be continued)