“BY Psychic Influence”
I’m still presenting ideas on this lesson. In my School of Entrepreneurship classes I’d talk to my class about being the kind of person that others will follow – that is to say, that others will allow to influence them. I could have turned the class over to Yoritomo Tashi from there.
I’m really appreciating this shogun, because he tells it like it is. You can’t argue with him, especially since he died 800 years ago. This book (not his only one)…what a legacy! Here are more ideas –
He talks about the health of the body which is related to that of the mind. He talks about hypochondriacs -“imaginary invalids”….and that “moral error” is the prime cause of physical ailments.
Whaaaat? It seems to me he is talking about overeating and not exercising, which causes all sorts of problems. “Moral error” he calls it. When you have control and you don’t use it, and it leads to bad outcomes…”moral error”. The words used were different back then, but they sure seem accurate and cutting now.
Here he talks about when a “superior mind” meets an “inferior one”, that the superior one prevails. (In today’s society, it may be rude and offensive to categorize people as inferior or superior, but please don’t be put off by the words. From the inner – the outer; and clearly some people are getting far better outcomes than others in their lives.)
“Influence is synonymous with ‘substitution of will’ – ours for the will the other person manifest. When two forces come together it is often the evil that gives way, for, to possess the genuine endowment of influence, certain qualities must come into play which rarely fall to the lot of mediocre minds….they (mediocre minds) are fatally enslaved to the satisfaction of their instincts, and their strength sapped with fleeting pleasures, and lack the impassioned desire of the better – the creator of cohesion forces.”
Next the shogun talks about a person who masters his consciousness will never allow himself to be thrown off by people who are evil or unclear – and that those people will never be successful in influencing others.
“The masters of conscious will alone can hope to arrive at this splendid goal of influencing others, for, their spirit being imbued with nothing but love of truth, they will ignore those passing whims that ever imprint falsehood of deceit on the thought of those who love to stray along the devious by-paths of unworthy considerations. The weak-minded must never hope to possess completely the power of dominance, for they ignore the unity of thought, in as much as their mouth utters one word while their mind conceives another; thus the image cannot take shape in them except in an imperfect fashion, and we know how important a part that plays which we might call – the materialization of the idea in the art of influencing others.”
Decoding the human social mind…800 years ago. Wow.
From the inner…the outer.