No.34

Accept things as they are without letting them disturb you

(Updated on March 17, 2006)

Hello, everyone,
I’m Fuyo Haruna.
Snow has melted in my hilly countryside and it is getting warmer and warmer every day.
I can feel the arrival of spring in the smell of soil and the scent of grasses carried on the breeze.
Spring is the season that helps us open up our minds.

Having seen a wide variety of people, I think people can make themselves happier by opening up their minds. Everyone has his or her own fixed view of what is right and what is wrong. This view actually binds the heart. If one can adopt a different view, one can live a more peaceful and a happier life. Your notion of what should and shouldn’t be done makes things difficult for you. The same thing is true of relationships with people. “Why is she always like this?” you might complain. Such a negative feeling or perception of another person often ends up making you suffer.

Then, how can we change things like this?
It’s not a question of changing the person who annoys you.
It’s not a question of changing the circumstances you are in.
All you have to do is to change yourself?your way of seeing the world.
If you think something is fine, it’ll be fine.
If you think that this may be a blessing in disguise for which you should be grateful, that’ll be fine.
If you try to change your own consciousness, not the person or the circumstances, you’ll see the landscape in front of you change drastically.
Isn’t it nonsense to stick to one view over decades of life?

The Chinese character that means “being troubled” is made of a character that represents a tree, and a square-like character surrounding the tree. As the character shows, we all have barriers that confine our hearts, so we all agonize, finding ourselves in trouble. If we can get rid of such barriers in our hearts, we’ll feel better. When you come up against something difficult, you are likely to say “Oh, no. I’m stuck. There’s no way out.” No way out? There is no such thing in this world. It is a product of your consciousness, isn’t it?

Whatever you do, you always get a result. And you always worry about whether the result meets your expectation. Should it fail to do so, you instantly see yourself “in trouble” and such a perception will make the thing even more unbearable for you.

People always determine for themselves whether the ‘result’ arrived at is good or bad for them. I think that’s where people start making mistakes. Even if the answer doesn’t satisfy you, just take another step forward without having a negative reaction.
Because you always exercise your own personal judgment on the result and say, “This is terrible!” or “This is what I was afraid of”, things will get worse.
Because you live in the world of such a consciousness, you always see yourself in trouble.
Why not just stop judging things and give things another try, starting from a clean slate?
Such a generous, unbound perception is sure to come up with another, different, great answer.

When people try to judge things, they are almost always bound by stereotypes. Because you are at the level of sticking to a fixed perception, things that annoy you or trouble you are bound to happen. Even when you have a result that you think is undesirable, it might be a wonderful answer for you when seen from a broader perspective?an answer given by Nature out of her love.
We are all ‘permitted to live’ as a part of the greater world that can never be fathomed by our own senses. So, it is wrong to judge things, simply exerting our own narrow, human perspectives.

I cannot think of living otherwise than staying calm whatever comes and letting things be as Nature wishes.
I’ve lived according to this belief throughout my life, since I was young.
I’ve never complained or whined about things that happened to me.
I’ve never thought ill of people.
Whether a person is good or bad is determined by Nature.
Are you sure you are absolutely right in saying this is wrong and that is bad, if seen from Nature’s point of view?
At the end of the day, you get frustrated with things or people because your soul is still at that level.
If you’ve risen to a higher world of consciousness, you will no longer take things negatively.
So, whatever answers I’ve had in life, I’ve thought that this must be the right answer given by Nature.

When you release your soul and let it live in a peaceful, unbound world of consciousness, you feel more at ease and happier. Once you start worrying about one thing, such worry multiples like germs in your heart.
In this world, even if you are facing a challenge, you don’t have to have the intense feeing of working hard. If you are in a world of “having to work hard”, you have to do so forever to get things done, because you’ll never be helped out by Nature. You’ll end up confining yourself to your own small world.

It is vital to open up your mind.
But take note that it is not about going easy on yourself! If you just go easy on yourself, believing that it is to ‘release yourself’, you are destined to fall into an unimaginably dreadful abyss. If you wish to ‘release yourself’ in the true sense, you have to have love for yourself; when seen by Nature, love and a sense of gratitude for yourself, for people, and for Nature must be with you. Then, you can truly release yourself.