Tenrikyo Ofudesaki - Our Natural Reluctance to Perform the Service -
The Service or Work that is intended to return our mind, our self-centered imagination, to its pristine original condition by settling or clearing it to reveal its true source and cause is not something that is familiar to our species.
We are pretty much thoroughly attached to the ideas that, for better or worse, our self-image is who we in fact are and that imagined self is limited to and identified by "our body" and other objects that we relate to and claim ownership over.
Even though it is commonly understood that our self images can be changed, they do so all of the time, it is a common belief that taken as a whole, the ideas that make up our self image are thought to be the single the truth of our self and that basic truth cannot, we believe, be changed. From the point of view of our original parental mind that view is "shallow".
By taking responsibly for our natural lack of knowledge concerning this question of the original conscious source and cause of our mind our unknown original consciousness has crafted and clearly demonstrated a path of return for us. The tireless effort of opening that path deserves to be called a "Model of Parental Love". Our original parental consciousness knows that we have regrettably been naturally and deeply attached to limiting and shallow ideas of self and those limitations are causing unintended problems for us. For that reason our original parental consciousness is willing to go to great lengths to help us to move past our natural reluctance and awaken to the original truth of our self so that we can be free of the unintended limitations and sufferings that have attached to the alienation that comes from not knowing and understanding the truth of our origin.