My Journey into the Daylight Age

This is my attempt to find myself. It appears . . . I have several reasons for doing this. I could find myself thru journaling and reflecting on my spiritual journey but I believe my true purpose in life has to do with helping another soul find his or her mission. So . . . by sharing my journey in finding my mission I could help other souls find theirs.

There is a chance we all found our true calling early on in our lives. In my case, I think when I was 5 or 6 years old and my baseball career was just beginning, I turned away from religion and pressed on with my physical life. My parents were guiding me and I can see now that my path was not meant to be a straight line. Everything that happened in my life . . . happened for a reason.

Bad Influence of Early Schooling (Foundation of Paradise)

Education is

Very important today.

What is the best way?

Balancing of the spiritual

With the physical seems right.

Today, 6/17/24, I was guided to a teaching in Foundation of Paradise. It is about a page long and I will connect the dots after I share the teaching in its entirety.

Meishu-sama wrote:

“It seems to me that in recent years people in general have developed intellectually while they have degenerated mentally.

This may sound odd, but what it means is this: People who are mentally shallow, though witty and clever on the surface, have increased in number, while it has become difficult to find individuals who have true, deep wisdom, self-control and dignity. Why is this so? From my viewpoint, this trend is definitely due to early schooling. Let me tell you the reason for my thinking in this way.

When education begins before children’s brains are mature enough to digest the lessons given to them in school, as is done today, there is a discrepancy between the degree of their mental development and the amount of knowledge forced on them. In truth, children should be allowed to use both mind and body properly according to age and in ratio of their individual development. Early schooling means that children seven or eight years of age are forced to do brain work which is appropriate for fifteen or sixteen-year old pupils.

This is nothing but mental overwork. What will be the result? Let me give you an example. When I was an elementary schoolboy, I had a desire to take lessons in judo (a Japanese art of self-defense) and applied for them. However, I was rejected for the reason that I was too young, that anyone under fifteen was not permitted to practice judo. On my asking why, the instructors told me that if boys under fifteen took judo lessons they would stop growing, due to the extreme physical exertion required.

The same idea can be applied to education. Today, children twelve or thirteen years of age are forced to study material that is best suited to adults, and it is considered wise for them to do so. It is true that intellect can exhibit remarkable development temporarily, and this gives the impression that the present method is effective for educating children. However, this does not help their deeper thinking faculties to develop. Instead, it causes them to grow up to be individuals whose thinking is clever but shallow.

In fact, in today’s Japan it is becoming harder and harder to find great statesmen, men of substance; indeed, such deep thinkers as we used to have are few and far between. I believe this is a serious matter to which educators should give deep consideration.”

Connecting the dots: This teaching opened my eyes to a better way of teaching. Let’s not use the excuse of new discoveries to increase the shear number of information required to learn in school. Take any field of science like biology. What is taught now about DNA has increased since I learned about it 55 years ago. Let’s teach the basics when it comes to the physical world and slowly bring in information and discussions about the spiritual side of things. We could use Einstein’s theories as a bridge between the spiritual world and the physical world. The reason I want to suggest this is because we can teach the basics about the spiritual world and create subjects for deep-level discussions, thus, preventing the shallow learning of the physical world.

The above solution will help the majority of students who are average and who are taught in regular classrooms. We can also take care of the special education students as well as the top level students with one-on-one tutoring. This will prevent mental overwork.

Meishu-sama also wrote an interesting chapter in the book, Foundation of Paradise, entitled, “Discrepancy between Time and Academic Learning”.

We speak of academic learning sweepingly, but you must know that there are two kinds: one is a living learning and the other is a dead learning. This may sound odd, so let me explain.

Studying just for learning’s sake offers a dead kind of education, while studying with the purpose of putting what is learned into actual practice offers a living kind of education. Studying for the sake of the search for the truth is quite a different matter; this is a learning that is the most valuable of all.

7/6/24 Update: I do not believe I was a victim of mental overwork. There were a number of years where I may have thought I was being overworked but . . . I realize now that I was not overworked. Some of the classes I took in college were dead learning. I was learning things because I had to and studying just to earn a grade. That was my perception of the class and not the fault of the professors. When I walked out of the finals for those classes I dumped most of the material at the door as I left the room. But some of the classes I took were living learning and I was planning on using the course materiel later in my Air Force career and definitely later in life. I still remember a lot of what I learned in courses such as Law for Commanders and Honor and Ethics. Most of my major courses also were living learning because I was definitely interested in what I was learning. And as Meishu-sama wrote the highest level of learning, “studying for the sake of the search for the truth . . .” was just barely covered. A simple procedure could have turned all my classes into the search for the truth. Question the truth of everything. Question the material in the textbook. Question the information coming from the professor. Question the truth of what anyone says, including ministers, friends, family, colleagues. Finally, confirm all facts and pieces of evidence like a murder trial so that the truth can be revealed.