Tenrikyo

Get a Life -- in Your Own Way

Here's a New Perspective on Life

It's FREE

Depressed? Vaguely dissatisfied with something or other? Do you, perhaps, want to change some aspects of your life?

If you have a body and mind, you have the capacity to change the direction of your life. You can start taking charge of your life today.

There are many ways of being happy -- making a lot of money and owning many possessions, having a gorgeous wife or husband or boyfriend or girlfriend and building a great career, owning no possessions and making as little money as possible, etc. If you have tried to do any of these and other things (with or without success) and none has helped you, there is still something else you can try.

Tips on how to bring about a change:

- Start by asking yourself the following questions. Are there any conditions that need be fulfilled in order for you to be happy? Are they absolute, or could some of them be dropped? Who made those conditions anyway? You or someone else?

- Have you ever wondered how much conditioning might be influencing your thoughts and actions? The conditioning may stem from our culture and tradition or even others' ideas, which we may have accepted without verifying them. We may be needlessly allowing the conditioning to bind and limit us.

- Conditioning can come also from the data furnished by our senses. We all have the sensation "I am this isolated being bounded and separated by this bag of skin." But how can you be so sure that you are not more than just that?

- Please notice the little voice in your head as you read this line. Can you hear that voice of the mind? I'm sure you can. The fact that you can hear this mental voice indicates that there is something else -- something other than the mind that is talking -- that hears or is aware of that voice. What if your real identity is not the body or the mind, but, rather, this "something else" (whether you call it "consciousness" or "core of your being" or whatever), which hears the mind's voice?

- I am not suggesting that the body and the mind are not part of you or unnecessary. All I am suggesting is that the body and mind may not be your whole being and that you may benefit from trying to shift your viewpoint from the body and mind to consciousness (or whatever you call it) which remains unaffected no matter what situation the body undergoes and no matter what the mind says (that little voice in your head) or feels (mood swings, etc.). This shift may be like the difference between doing some work while standing in a small boat floating down a river and doing the same work while standing on the ground. You can take charge of your life from the securer viewpoint whose range covers your whole being.

- Is it you who are sitting there, or is it the body that is sitting there? Is it you who are considering this question, or is it the mind that is considering the question? You don't have to be bound by the body or the mind.