“You already have inner strength within you, and all you have to do is to cultivate it; and it starts with believing that you can take control of your own life.” ~Mia Tomikawa
Master Okawa wrote the book to encourage everyone to get through the inevitable crises that pop up in people’s lives by cultivating a mind strong enough to manage these. Mia mentions that there are life crises that take place in particular in the decades of one’s life - in childhood, for example, there’s the family squabble or crisis; in one’s twenties, there’s the job crisis and in one’s eighties,there’s the coming to terms with destiny. Master Okawa notes that our minds and our souls are things which will last beyond death, and cultivating a strong mind enables one to handle the challenges that life throws one’s way. Mia also notes that, in Japanese, the word “mind” actually encompasses the mind, the heart and the soul, which are a person’s total being.
According to Master Okawa, who bases this structure on Eastern philosophy, there are three stages of growth for all human beings:
Becoming a sharp, intelligent and capable person, which manifests when one is young.
Becoming dynamic, which is necessary to become a leader who can work with and guide others.
Becoming calmer and more profound, which is necessary for one’s old age.
To create a strong mind, one needs to believe and have faith in oneself, first off. This requires having faith that new paths will open up as one lives, and becoming more courageous and being forgiving are two ways by which one can cultivate a strong mind. Forgiving is a way to let go of resentment and hurt, for the grudge that one holds against another will torment one within, and thus weaken one. Taking responsibility for one’s life is another key to creating a strong mind, as blaming others or events for one’s lack of happiness removes one’s capability to be happy.
The fear of failure and making mistakes is ever present, and this is due to one’s desire to protect oneself or one’s ego. Overcoming this fear requires a change in mindset, where one sees the failures and challenges of life as lessons given and situations to be learned from, rather than the “bad” thing that these are commonly made out to be. Master Okawa notes Thomas Edison as an example of someone who never saw failures or mistakes but instead saw opportunities to learn from, and this is the perspective necessary to create a strong mind. Not having challenges in one’s life means that one will never grow or find true happiness, as growth enables that.
Parenting is important where giving a child the foundations necessary to create a strong mind are concerned. Parents need to enable and educate children to feel responsible for their own lives to create a sense of duty and responsibility, and Mia notes that kids in the United States are more responsible and independent when compared to kids in Japan. She notes that, in Japan, the parents make all the decisions sometimes to the point of spoiling them, so that they don’t take responsibility for themselves.
One’s accomplishments can create a bias against others, where one judges others by one’s own strong points. Master Okawa notes that people need to be more accepting of others who might seem weak from one’s point of view, as those others have their own gifts to bring. Praising others is part of having a strong mind, particularly as doing so enables others to become present to their own capabilities and to connect with one. This is, admittedly, hard to do where people who have hurt someone is concerned, but in the long run, according to Master Okawa, this will create a connection between the people concerned. This is not easy to do, where people who are hurtful are concerned, and Mia points out that practicing this is a process much like working out in the gym, where one’s muscles hurt the first few times but become stronger and more capable over time.
“Your words often reflect your thoughts.” ~Mia Tomikawa
Master
Ryuho Okawa is a spiritual leader and international bestselling author
whose goal is to help people find happiness and create a better world
and has spent the past thirty years creating the Happy Science movement,
which now has members all over the world. Mia herself became involved
with Happy Science while she was living in Los Angeles, when she read
some of Okawa’s books. She became a member of the movement then became a
staff member, and among her present responsibilities are editing and
publicizing Happy Science books. The Unhappiness Syndrome is for people
who are unhappy, who unknowingly choose actions and thoughts that make
them unhappy, but who still want to become happy themselves.
Unhappiness,
according to Mia, is based on being unhappy with oneself and with
everyone and everything in the world. She notes that attempting to to
become happy by seeking this from other people or the environment does
not make one truly happy, as one is not happy in the first place, and
one of the major signs that indicate how unhappy someone is, is when he
or she constantly blames others or the environment for the bad things
that happen to them. Mia notes that unhappiness can be invited into
one’s life, and that one who invites it can spread unhappiness to
others. Events that can cause suffering does not necessarily cause
unhappiness but can enable one to progress to enlightenment in the way
that one handles that event.
Mia notes that the term
“syndrome” refers more to one’s mental attitude and spiritual state,
than referring to any disease itself. One method Mia recommends for
changing one’s attitude is to see and assess oneself objectively, to
become aware of the patterns of unhappiness, and gives a guideline for
reviewing and writing down one’s thoughts and actions throughout the
day, which would enable one to see the negative thoughts and actions
throughout the day. Once these are recognized, one must then practice to
replace these with more positive thoughts and actions, and Mia admits
that this takes time, as doing so takes practice.
Mia
notes that unhappy thoughts come from the desire to protect oneself
from any hurtful events that have happened in one’s life and also notes
that such unhappy thoughts actually wind up repeating the same pattern
of hurt throughout one’s life. She notes that the first step in getting
out of the rut is to spend less time immersed in negative thoughts, and
the second step is to fill one’s mind with positive thoughts and be
thankful for all the good that happens to oneself. She also recommends
sitting and waiting for the bad times to pass and flow, to help oneself
let go of any unhappiness - something which also takes practice.
Mia
notes that The Unhappiness Syndrome, like other books of Ryuho Okawa,
talks about spirituality rather than just deals with self-improvement,
and this is what makes the book different from other self-help books.
She also recommends that people rediscover their purpose in their life,
the one they set for themselves before they were born, she says, to help
guide them in achieving happiness.
“The path to happiness starts with wanting to be happier.”~Mia Tomikawa
Happy Science is a global organization established in 1986 by Ryuho Okawa, and is a spiritual movement dedicated to bringing happiness to people all throughout the world. Mia herself became involved with Happy Science when she lived in the United States, and in addition to being a member, she also presently works with the publishing division of Happy Science, translating Master Okawa’s works from Japanese to English.
Mia noted that there are a lot of people who are unhappy today who want to be happy, but have no idea how to achieve that state. The book, Invitation to Happiness: 7 Inspirations from Your Inner Angel, is a practical guidebook intended to provide a starting point to achieving happiness, and to act as a gateway to spreading happiness throughout the world.
The book is intended to be read in hard copy form, and to this end, the design was made the way it was, and while it is targeted primarily to women, men can likewise appreciate the design and pick up things within that will help them.
Although the book is intended to be read in progression, from the first chapter to the last, Mia remarks that a reader can go straight to the chapter where he or she is presently having an issue with and then work from there, and explains that the downloadable meditative music, found on the website, is intended to help the reader in doing the various exercises found within the book.
Mia explains that the “Inner Angel” mentioned in the book is a spiritual being that supports and guides people, with the Christian equivalent being “guardian angel.” Mia notes that hardships and failures, which are things that the ordinary person wants to avoid out of a desire for convenience and ease (and because these aren’t experienced in the spiritual world) are actually necessary for people’s growth, giving, as an analogy, the aches and pains one would experience if one works out at the gym, for the pains experienced during a gym workout enable one to build his or her muscles. Mia notes that grudges and resentment spring from our not being able to understand why other people do the things they do, and that compassion and tolerance spring from seeing things from the other person’s point of view. Invitation to Happiness includes an exercise that would help out with this issue.
Mia remarks that, before we are born, we create our own goals (as spirits), and that remembering what these goals are, and then working towards these, bring joy to us and help us achieve a connection with our ideal self, our so-called True Self. The True Self is the part of a human being which is brilliant like a diamond, with the equivalent Christian concept being one’s Divine Nature, while the False Self is the part of a human being that opposes the True Self, and it is this False Self that harbors negative emotions such as jealousy and grudges. Mia remarks that, for people who don’t even know where to start to discover their True Self, they should begin by believing that one’s True Self exists, and from there, finding out what one’s strengths are and then build on these.
Mia hopes the book will enable its readers to discover their True Self, why they are living on the Earth, and what their strengths are and then sharing the joy they discover. To the curious, Mia says she would explain that the book is a guidebook and a tool whose contents its readers need to practice in order to develop themselves spiritually, and Mia invites everyone to just try the book out for them to see what it really is to be happy.
