Tenrikyo Dynamic Mission - MANAGING EXPECTATIONS

God has an expectation and an intention for us and we have our own expectations and intentions. The trick is to make our mind a perfect reflection of God's expectation and intention. When we attempt to help others it is difficult to accommodate the  expectations that are common in the world. The "Osashizu" ("Timely Talks and Directives") are a fine example of  a dialog between expectations and intentions that are totally different from one another.

When I ponder the model story of Miki Nakayama's awakening as a "shrine of God" it occurs to me that the expectation of the Nakayama family was that the evils of illness that were tormenting them would be removed by praying and paying for magical ritual incantations directed at the local gods and spirits that were determined to be the cause of their troubles. Though those expectations had been satisfied several times in the prior year it is significant that particular approach did not make it into the teaching of single hearted salvation and the efforts to open a path of universal single hearted salvation for all human beings equally. 

Though the mind of God wished to give  our minds an upgrade by showing us how to reveal the truth of our origin through our own mind and hastened us to return our minds to their place of manufacture for the repair that would be the answer to all of our prayers at once there was and continues to be resistance and misunderstanding of what God intends for us.

According to God our difficulty is our natural inability to think in a way contrary to our ordinary worldly common self centered way. That worldly common way is of course modeled by the Nakayama family prior to Miki's awakening and its elements should be familiar to us all. In short they wanted relief for their own problems and were willing to sincerely pray and pay to have their expectations met. Their effort was directed toward their own circumstance and issues in a particular time and place and did not necessarily include anyone else's circumstances and issues.  That we pray and pay for what we want for our self and those close to us is common in the world and in general is seen as a virtue. The way of the teaching universal single hearted salvation as spread through the Tenrikyo Dynamic is not hostile to our worldly common expectations and methods and recognizes that they were taught to us by God in an earlier time in our development. Our worldly common thinking is not however a part of God's new teaching that flows from the knowledge and understanding of the truth of origin and indeed our worldly common thinking is an obstacle on the path to the realization of a path of universal single hearted salvation.

Our natural point of view is self centered and that self centeredness is the foundation for our worldly common thinking. The mind that has returned to its origin is however able to use the point of view of our original parent of origin as the foundation for a new way of thinking to be used to create a new world of joyous life for all equally.

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