A Fearful Mishirase

To attend the wedding of one of our members in the town of Geelong, in January several years ago, my wife and I flew from Brisbane to the Avalon airport south of Melbourne, which was close to our destination. Upon our arrival we hired a car for our stay in the area and began the short 20 minute drive to Geelong. As we approached the outskirts of Geelong, we stopped at an information centre to obtain some maps of the area. In particular we wanted to know more about The Great Ocean Road along the southern coast of Australia that begins just past Geelong. It’s well known as an attractive winding drive with gorgeous scenery.

The information centre was quite new, very large and had a great deal of material. It even had a room with a huge horizontal relief map of the area in large scale. There was also a number of staff and volunteers to assist those seeking information and a very pleasant senior gentleman came to help us. He was very enthusiastic and explained the history of the region in great detail as he was pointing out the areas we wanted to see. We soon learned that Geelong used to be an important port for sailing vessels and that during the gold rush of the 1800’s thousands of foreigners, including many Chinese came to try and make their fortune. Indeed the town has many beautiful old brick buildings from that era.

The gentleman assisting us kept handing us more and more maps and at first it was quite interesting, but I think he just loves the history of the region and we got him going with all our questions. He began giving us material on many places we knew we wouldn’t have any time to visit and explained about each of them in exquisite detail. Nevertheless, he thought they were all worth a visit. Slowly I began to get annoyed because we couldn’t get away from him and the more I became irritated, the more he continued even more enthusiastically. He even began giving us maps he had already handed us. Anyway, we were finally able to gracefully thank him and make a quick exit. But by that time I was very irritated because we wanted to spend time looking around, not viewing countless maps and brochures.

As soon as we left I began to sneeze, and within about 10 minutes I had developed a full head cold. I couldn’t believe it! Never before have I had a cold that consumed me so rapidly. My nose and head were completely stuffed up.

We drove to our motel where we found there had been a mix up with our reservation being cancelled and they had no more rooms. However, the couple running the motel were very apologetic and managed to find us a room in a nearby motel which turned out to be cheaper and almost the same quality.

I realised that I was suffering from a full head cold because of the irritated state of mind I had while at the visitor information centre. So I took out my portable Omitama (prayer symbol) and did a sincere prayer of apology and then rested for awhile after taking several vitamin C pills we had with us. I had hoped to get rid of my cold as quickly as it had developed. Unfortunately God was not going to let me get off that easily.

I knew that I would have trouble going to the wedding the next day in the state I was in, so I did an Oyashikiri Prayer several more times that day. By the time I went to bed my situation had not improved at all. Surprisingly though, when I got up the next morning I was completely free of the cold. I didn’t even have so much as a trace of it.

To ensure it wouldn’t return, I immediately did a prayer of appreciation to God and again apologised for having had such an irritated state of mind.

As a minister, I have to be very careful because God is very strict if we do things that we know we should not be doing. This is particularly true if we are teaching others not to do things like being irritated, but then we do them ourselves. In my case it was even worse because I noticed later on that a recent Mioshie (divine instruction) I was practising had the line: “I shall not have a mind to be irritated about anything.” I had forgotten this line.

I think I recovered overnight because I took my Mishirase positively as God’s severe teaching. Nevertheless, I was shocked that I could become ill so rapidly and I felt as the First Founder (Tokuharu Miki) did when he said the only thing he feared was God. I realised just how rapidly we can have a Mishirase occur if we do things that are contrary to God’s way. The problem is that we may not even notice we are doing them and that’s the fearful part. So we have to be alert at all times.

I truly appreciate that God gave me an opportunity to fully understand and practice the line in my Mioshie. Sometimes we need a shock like this to clearly realise our bad habits so that we can change them and improve our lives.