INTRODUCTION

✨ In this reflection, Master Woo Myung examines the common saying that one must exercise strict self-restraint when alone. While this idea encourages people not to think or do wrong, he explains that such suppression does not align with Truth. 🌌

🌿 Attempts to forcibly control thoughts only strengthen the sense of self and create inner conflict. Good and bad thoughts arise because one lives with a self-centered mind. Trying to suppress them often makes them stronger. 🌠

True freedom comes not from restraint, but from living without the self, where suppression and conflict naturally disappear. ✨

ORIGINAL WRITING BY MASTER WOO MYUNG

Is the saying that one must exercise self-restraint when one is alone correct?

This saying means that one should not think bad thoughts or do bad things even when one is alone, but it is not right. Not only does man have freedom of thought, but it is also difficult to draw the boundaries of what is and is not bad.

People who were in the process of spiritual practice used this saying as a way to bring their minds to perfection, but this saying is not in keeping with the principles of the world. Man has good and bad thoughts and does deeds that are good and bad because he exists of and by himself. Trying to consciously remove these things will only result in a bigger mind remaining. Such pretentious actions are wrong.

Man should know his duties as a human being, and live and act according to them, and the best way is to live without self, without suppression or restrictions. When one is suppressed, it begets more suppression, and when one thinks that one must not do something, it makes the desire to do it grow.

When man is free from all suppression he can live as a true human being and see nature’s flow.

— Woo Myung

🌿 REFLECT AT SANTA CLARA MEDITATION

At Santa Clara Meditation, this teaching is practiced by discarding the self rather than suppressing thoughts. When the self disappears, inner conflict ends and one can live naturally according to nature’s flow—exactly as taught by Master Woo Myung. 🌠