| A Second Life |
|---|
| — This Is Your Last Chance — |
Up to this point, I have written mainly with those who are entering what is commonly called "the second stage of life" in mind.
People who can step confidently and enthusiastically into this second phase may, in one sense, be considered fortunate.
After all, they have managed, in their own way, to bring one chapter of life to a close and are now able to think about what comes next.
Perhaps they still possess physical strength, mental energy, and even a certain degree of financial stability.
And I believe that if such people — people whose circumstances allow it — could truly experience the deeper meaning of a "second life," then the final chapter of their lives might become something truly fulfilling.
It is from that feeling that I have written these pages.
Of course, what I am speaking about here should never be limited only to a particular group of people.
Because if we ask what human beings are truly meant to do after being born into this world, the answer is simply this:
To correct themselves.
No matter where we are born, no matter what kind of body we are given, and no matter what kind of life unfolds afterward, what we ultimately must do is correct ourselves.
This applies equally to the young and the old, to men and women alike.
Race, nationality, and ethnicity make no difference.
Every human being born into this world must eventually undertake the work of self-correction and rediscover the path back to their original nature.
And yet humanity has lived without the slightest awareness of this.
Simply put, we have misunderstood who we truly are.
I, too, completely misunderstood myself.
Though I knew almost nothing about myself, I arrogantly believed that no one understood me better than I did.
To be honest, I had very little interest in the invisible world of the heart.
Instead, I valued only what I could see, touch, and confirm with my own senses.
I was someone who sought value entirely within the world of form.
I believed that joy and happiness could only be felt when expressed through visible reality.
And yet, at long last, I became aware of my own mistakes and came to know within my heart what my true self had been seeking all along.
The scenery before my eyes may look the same as before, but the scenery reflected within my heart has become completely different.
And now, I am fifty years old.
Certainly no longer young.
I have spent half a century together with this body.
I cannot say that my life has been filled with dramatic upheavals.
I belong to a generation that did not experience war.
And yet I, too, have encountered several major turning points in life.
My path has not been entirely smooth.
The reason I was able to continue through confusion, suffering, and uncertainty until this point is because, as I wrote in the earlier part of this book, I desperately continued facing myself through both "reflection upon the mother" and "reflection upon external dependence."
And through that process, I came to understand that the work I am truly meant to do is to observe the world within myself through this physical body.
Now, while constantly checking the direction of my heart, I intend to continue doing what I truly came here to do — namely, correcting the world of consciousness within myself as much as possible before laying this body down.
The moment in which I reconfirmed that determination became, for me, the true beginning of my second life.
And from now until the day I leave this body behind, the work of my second life will be to carefully manage the direction of my heart.
An uncertain age still lies ahead of us.
Yet now, because I can clearly feel the direction in which my life is meant to go — a direction that will not be swept away by the tides of society — and because I feel myself steadily moving toward it, I cannot help but sense that I was born carrying an extraordinarily strong determination.
Through "reflection upon the mother" and "reflection upon external dependence," I have repeatedly confirmed this within myself.
That determination was this:
To come to know the truth, no matter what.
In other words, my consciousness had fallen into an unimaginably dark and hopeless state.
The consciousness that had suffered and struggled within darkness placed everything upon this lifetime.
Against that background of consciousness, I received this present body from my mother.
I was born carrying within me an energy that fiercely resisted warmth itself.
The energy that opposed and rebelled against the consciousness of the mother was immense.
Of course, written this way, these words may still make little sense to you.
So I will leave that discussion for another time and return to the main point.
Everyone born into this world must engage in self-correction.
Yet the phrase "self-correction" itself may sound vague.
So from here onward, I would like to focus my thoughts around three questions: