What Divides Happiness from Unhappiness

★Happiness and unhappiness are divided by your own recognition

When people think “someone did something to me,” in most cases they think with passive recognition: “So-and-so did such-and-such to me,” “So-and-so did such-and-such.”

But it’s about time all the humanity of Earth noticed that this means their thoughts have stopped at a very shallow level of consciousness.

What that means is that it’s a state of mind lacking the active recognition of how you yourself took it, and so you end up blaming someone or something.

As long as you don’t hand over the power of your own life to others, what others think or say or do can’t damage the light deep in your heart.

Recognition is always something you do of your own accord—it isn’t that someone makes you think something.

To tell the truth, how you take something has far greater meaning for your heart than “who did what.”

When several people experience the same situation under equal circumstances, their ways of taking it can differ from person to person, right?

For example, suppose there are twin brothers born to the same parents and raised in the same way. By the time they are old enough to understand, one grows up healthy with a heart full to the brim with his parents’ love, while the other often cries and frets, feeling he isn’t loved enough. Although the parents meant to raise them equally without any difference, why do you think such a difference in nature actually arises?

★If you are an adult

To sum it up in a word, it’s how those children take things.

If you carefully observe the movements of thought of the child who came to feel he wasn’t loved enough, his thoughts got caught on several memories of being scolded by his parents in the past, and based on those memories he became convinced, “It’s because I’m not loved.”

The other child, on the other hand, though he had the same experiences of being scolded, isn’t tormented by such thoughts because he didn’t get caught on the memories of being scolded. You could say that even when he was scolded out of his parents’ love, he shrugged it off and his life grew up healthy.

In the same way, being caught on past memories even as an adult, and suffering in negative thinking, is very painful, isn’t it?

That said, it’s also a fact that there are many such adults.

So people must each deepen their reflection on how to use consciousness to create a healthy destiny.

Because what divides a person’s happiness from unhappiness depends very greatly on the movements of their thoughts.