| Selection - Life and Choices |
We Create Our Own Life
(excerpt from chapter 2) |
What is the most difficult, most painful thing for human beings? I would like all of you to think deeply about this. What is the most trying and difficult thing for you? Is it illness? Is it poverty? Is it losing your job? Is it seeing your children get into trouble?
What is suffering? How is it created? Although the situation is different for each of us, fundamentally, what we perceive as suffering occurs when some repressed pain or misery that exists inside us is drawn out, for any of a variety of reasons. As we gradually become aware of this, our suffering ceases to be suffering. Instead, we start to feel it more as a cloud that is temporarily passing overhead.
How much our life can change depends on our mind. For people whose aims are firmly established, difficulties never seem like difficulties at all. To know this is to know truth. What do I mean by ‘truth’? I mean the universal law. Knowing the universal law puts us on a path through which we are released from our pain and suffering.
We have all heard the term ‘ignorance.’ To knowingly commit a crime is considered serious, but committing it unknowingly is usually treated more lightly. However, from the perspective of universal truth, there is no crime more serious than ignorance. To be ignorant of something means that we do not try to know it. We do not even attempt to make an effort to know.
By having others solve the problems that we created, by having others think for us, by clinging to religion and having others pray for us, we can momentarily run away from our troubles. But if there has not been any real change in our consciousness, the same conditions will visit us again. Or rather, to whatever extent we could not overcome our difficulty on our own, our suffering will increase by that amount when it revisits us. If, at that time, we do the same thing and cling to an external God, cling to material profit, cling to psychics, cling to whatever we can, then even if things improve for the moment, the same conditions will end up repeating themselves over and over.
Let’s say that we are told to pray and to depend on God. God, please help me. Oh God, dear God, I beg you. Help, please help. Dear God… Even when we willfully lean on God in this way, if we concentrate all our energy into our prayer, our wish may temporarily be fulfilled. If we pray unquestioningly, then, even if we are still in the early stages of our spiritual development, whatever we truly believe will manifest in this world, one hundred percent. This is a universal law, and has nothing to do with religion. It wasn’t our adherence to religious prayer that made our situation better. Rather, when we deeply desire something and believe in its accomplishment beyond even a shadow of a doubt, it will indeed take shape according to our wishes.
Your life is being created by you, yourself. It is not being created by your parents, by your children, or by your mentors or supervisors. You, yourself, are creating it.
That’s not true, you might think. My marriage was decided by my parents. They arranged for me to meet the other person, and decided it was a good match. But even in this case, you are the one who went along with their decision. You made the decision when you were unable to say ‘no.’ You chose to suppress your own will and allow your life to be directed by the opinions of others. This, too, is a course that you created. Your parents did not create your life. Everything was determined by your own choices and decisions.
We are entirely responsible for this life that we have created. Therefore, when we become ill, encounter some hardship, or are beset with sorrow, it is a kind of message—an opportunity to realize that in some way, we have diverged from the path of true principles.
Let’s say we are not feeling well. The reason might be that we’ve been eating and drinking too much. Or, if our stomach is upset, we may have had too much alcohol the night before. This is the law of cause and effect—a certain cause leads to a certain effect. When we eliminate the cause, the effect disappears. If we see an effect, it means that its cause was definitely within us. To look for the cause in someone else would be mistaken, and an indication that we are not in tune with universal truth. In that case, what is important for us is to learn true principles, and to make small, steady efforts to revise the course of our life.
|
|
 |
| Preview Our Books! |
Selections from many of our books are available.
Please click here—
> Index of Selections |
|
