Kuyō (ancestral worship) will help you

Your names have kotodama (vibrational energy or spirit of words/sound) too. So even if it's a foreign name, if I hear the sound of it, I could read all the ancestral path and fate. That is because a name is related to your spiritual connection. This is why using your last name is important. If you have changed your last name, it will feel very awkward in the beginning. This happens not only from the habit, but through the spiritual connection. If you divorce and go back to your maiden name, your spiritual connection will be back to your maiden family. For those who do not have children, or are unmarried should naturally use their last name on the tanzaku(memorial stand). When you have done a true sense of kuyō, you have created an after death fate for yourself. You will be at peace. Everything you do will always come back to you. I would recommend the ancestral worship rather than the trendy higher-self ideas or imagination methods.

When I first started the ancestral kuyō 20 years ago, the beginning phase was very hard. I realized the Buddhist style memorial service was not really serving its purpose. By using the “gratitude”, it will particularly reach ghostly spirits and other spirits, so the lost ones will start to come around. When one group of my ancestor was settled in peace, I felt myself becoming more strong and stable. Then another group of spirits started to come and then I started to feel a little grey…. And the cycle went on.

At present, all of my ancestors are pretty much in peace, but once in a while a very far relative will come to ask for help. Around last autumn, one spirit came by. When I started to feel depressed all of a sudden, I knew it was a spirit asking for help. I offered another incense for that spirit with the gratitude chant for several days. Then it left and went into peace. The ideal is to have all of the descendents to pray with gratitude, but even just one of you acting on it, will be a great help to clear the clouds above your family members and relatives.

My understanding is that a spirit or a soul is made out of electromagnetic waves. A lost soul emanates a minus ki (chi), and when a lost soul is stuck to a person, that person is exposed to this minus ki . If you ignore that fact, when the sun power increases and starts to emanate a strong plus ki, it will give you an extremely strong impact. By sending the gratitude, the minus energy of a lost spirit will turn into a plus. This will help you greatly to develop in a plus direction. On the contrary, for those who carry a lot of minus ki, this era, is going to be extremely difficult.

"Ikashite-Itadaite Arigato-Gozaimasu." "Thank you for letting us live."

ps. The proper & best way of Kuyo will be introduced in the later post.