[silence]
Professor: Do you want to go first?
Professor: Your line is clear today?  Tatsuya: Yeah.
Professor: Okay, great! You're outside?
Tatsuya: Yeah, I am.
Tatsuya: I'm just in my front yard, right here on my porch.
 
Professor: That's the best spot to get the internet?
 
Tatsuya: Yeah
Professor: Yeah, sometimes it does.
Professor: You know,  going outside is one of the ways.
Tatsuya: Okay.
Tatsuya: I think I'll share screen.
 
 
Professor: Oh, I'll  give you the right.
Professor: You want to go first, right?
Tatsuya: Yeah
Professor: So, I'll give you the right.
Professor: So now you can go!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Tatsuya: So, is it okay if I can start?
Professor: Yes, please
Tatsuya: Welcome to my identity presentation.
My name is Tatsuya Yoshino.
 
So, the overview of this is that
I'm going to first talk about why I am pro-family, why I am pro-disability rights, and why I am pro-Jesus.
But, I'll just start from the beginning of my life, and this will all make sense at the end.
 
So, for my family ....
 
It was during World War 2
that my grandmother on my mom's side of the family
lived in Osaka.
During that time,
the Americans were bombing the big cities of Japan.
So, she and her mother and her older sister had to evacuate to a small city called Yonago which is on the coast of the Sea of Japan.
And, during that time, they faced starvation because all of the food sources went to the soldiers who were fighting the Second World War.
 
So, my grandmother's older sister died because of starvation.
 
So, her mother ended up spoiling her, my  grandmother when she was growing up.
So, what happened was that,
she became too strict and to verbaly abusive to my mom
And that ruined her (my mom's) self esteem while she was growing up
But, that also gave her an incentive to get a successful career as a doctor.
Professor: Medical doctor?
Tatsuya: Yeah, as a medical doctor. So, she really studied very hard for that.
On the other hand, on my dad's side of the family,
.......
my great-grandparents....
.........
my grandfather was the youngest of the family, so he never got the inheritance from his own parents.
So, what happened was that
he and his wife, my grandmother
they were so ambitious to earn money
to become a doctor
so that when my dad was growing up,
he really never had the parental support of his father. So, he grew up to be very insecure.
Also, on my dad's side of the family, there's autism which runs down the family.
So, it made it difficult when my father was growing up.
 
Without parental support, without educational support, basically, my dad borrowed the money that my grandparents had earned from their job to get into medical school.
And, both my  parents met during medical school. One of the things is that I am proud that my mom chose to separate from my dad when I was three years old.
My family was really broken
and I don't really have a perfect family
And, my grandparents didn't support either of my parents.
So, that was the number one reason, we chose to separate was because of family problems.
But, the second thing why my mom chose to move to the US with me and my younger brother was because I had autism.
And, at that time, Japan did not have proper treatment for autism.
So, that's why my mom chose to move to the US.
So, I just want to quickly talk about my experience with autism.
Of course, there were so many great therapies in the United States,
that Japan couldn't offer me,
 
And, it really helped because I did like ABA therapy when I was three years old.
But, the whole issue was that when I was 12 years old,
I really had a bad counselor.
And, at that time,
my mom did not think that I could become successful because I had autism,
so what she did was ....
 
It's very sad to say, but she did my homework for me almost at times.
And, she hired a lot of tutors , so I kind of became overdependent on the tutor.
And,  that really broke my self-esteem because
I felt that I couldn't do homework well on my own
So, whenever I attempted to do something that was academically challenging or something that required more thought,
I  really felt insecure, and I didn't want to do it.
There was so much pain in doing simple homework or school assignments
just this ton of emotional pain.
And, I felt really insecure compared to other boys around me, I mean especially because I was raised with a single parent,  But also this was because I wasn’t good at sports compared to the rest of the boys around me.
This was until a few good friends came alongside of me.
That just contributed more to my emotional insecurity.
And, one time, it led me to do a horrible thing, which was breaking my brother's  computer.
And, so my mom sent me to this psychologist,
And, it's just really sad, but this psychologist
told me that I deserved to be locked up in a mental institution for the rest of my life
and he thought that I was making autism as an excuse for the bad things I was doing.
And, one of the things that he did was  pressure me to be on medication.
My mom knew that I had this psychologist, but this psychologist was really great in front of my mom, so whenever I told my mom
about the thing that this psychologist was doing,
she was insensitive to it, or she kind of just ignored me.
And, that hurt me even more.
 
So, I became more depressed, violent, and angry.
The social worker came once, and I almost got evicted out of my apartment for my emotional breakdowns I had at home.
It was just a really hard season for me.
That’s why I want to go into Speech Language Pathology or go into the field of helping children with disabilities or work for disability rights because these types of things happen:
when a psychologist or professional who just doesn’t really care about you
who just thinks about earning the money and abusing the people who are actually hurt or people who are struggling with their disability or who are really insecure about their academic stance.
That was me.
And I remember after this happened that I told him that I was attempting to commit suicide, but he never really did anything about it.
Later, my mom found out about all of this, and she said I didn’t need to go to this counselor anymore,
but the  damage that it caused was really severe, and I felt really scared from it.
But, one of the things that really helped me get out of this dark time was sports.
And, what boosted my self-esteem was when I got recruited to the Egan Middle School Soccer Team.
And, it was because after all of this, there was so much anger in me, but I vented out all my anger through sports.
And, I went on long biking trips just because I didn’t want to make this emotional pain a burden to my family or anything like that. So, that’s one way I did it.
nother way was actually Japan. It’s silly though because my mom wanted to become a doctor in the United States, so she sent me back to Japan.
The  Japanese people in the Japanese middle school, the people were so nice, and I got to teach them English, and that was one of the way that I kind of overcame the pain in the past.
While I was there, wow, I am actually useful to this world because I know both Japanese and English.
So, that was what sparked my interest in learning Japanese at this moment in time after that thing happened.
In high school, because of all the stress and the trauma that happened since I was 12, I actually went into the New Age movement.
The things that I did were meditation and yoga.
My worldview was relativistic, which means the whole purpose or meaning of this world is that there is no difference between wrong or right, and ultimately we are living in this illusion of thinking that  something is right or wrong.
That was where my worldview was at.
This whole new age thing, meditation thing, spirituality  thing that I was in led me into martial arts.
That was one of the ways I tried to find deeper meaning in my spirituality.
It was also very self-centered because I believed that I was god or there was a god within me and this whole worldview  is very pantheistic.
So it means that god is in everything, god is in me, you, the plants out here. And that was my whole worldview, and I was diligent in pursuing it.
I even did meditation for 20 minutes a day, I did so much martial arts, I did wrestling, swimming, so I was really athletic during this time too.
I think my athleticism and spirituality merged together well. But, I still felt spiritual brokenness inside. Something wasn’t right. Something didn’t satisfy me inside.
So, one day I was just looking through my YouTube Channel, and  I happened to actually find this Japanese-American Christian Channel.
At first, I didn’t notice it, but it seized my interest because they were talking about some of the conspiracy theories that both Christian and New Age groups love to talk about.
So, I just kind of got into it. But then I found out this thing…… And that leads me to how Jesus found me or how I found Jesus or how I found Christianity and how I found out about the Bible and Jesus.
One of the things I found out was Matthew 5:28 which says, and these are Jesus’ words “But, if you look at a woman or a man to lust after them in your own heart has already committed adultery.”
And this was a whole worldview shift. The whole difference between right and wrong was an illusion and everytime I said something was right or wrong in my head, I had to condemn that thought.
But, in this Christian worldview, I found out that there is a clear line between right and wrong, and God is not pantheistic but God is almost like a person or an individual.
So when I saw this verse, I was like “wow, so God really looks at my heart’s condition” And he also thinks of sex to be wrong…. Or any violation of the sexual standards is wrong or that God thinks that sex is sacred.
But, I didn’t want to convert to become a Christian because that would destroy all of the efforts that I took on in the New Age movement, but I still asked God, because I thought that maybe Christianity  would satisfy the brokenness that I had inside.
So, I said to God, “If this verse is true, I want you to spiritually bless me. I’ll stop doing masturbation, I’ll stop doing pornography, I’ll stop all the bad things that I’ve been doing in my life.  But , if I try to do that for a week,  within that week, You have to spiritually bless me.”
And this was amazing. He did spiritually bless me within that week. And, He even gave me a vision of hell. After He spiritually blessed me, He showed me the gates of hell which is even mentioned in these three verses of the Bible.
In this vision, I was falling through the gates of hell, and that was because of the bad things or the sins that I committed in my life. But, Jesus  saved me from that. This was a spiritual experience, and the Holy Spirit came, and He took me out of hell because I was  falling straight through the gates of hell, and He took me out, and He put my spirit back into my body.
And this was really weird, but in the new age movement, I was contacting a lot of spirits and a lot of entities in the spiritual realm, but because I found out who Jesus truly was, that He died on the cross for my sins, and He came back to life, those things that I was contacting in the new age movement, the ascended masters, and the spirit guides, they turned out to be demons, and they attacked me. But even then, Jesus saved me from that.
And that’s how I became a Christian. Ever since that spiritual experience happened, I totally committed my life to Jesus, and that’s how I became a Christian. When  I became a Christian, my parents thought that I was completely crazy, but I know that this really happened to me.
People say that “You can choose your religion” but for me, this was a spiritual experience more that God found me in the midst of my spiritual search in the New Age movement. It wasn’t that I choose Him or I had the ability to choose to put my faith in Jesus, but it’s so amazing. I don’t think I can explain this clearly right now, and it’ll take so much more time if I went deeper into my testimony. But that’s my presentation. Thank you for listening.
Thank you, are there any questions. 質問. ない
I got a random question. Did music play any role in your spirituality?
I wasn’t a very musical person actually. I mean I used to play the piano, but I wasn’t that great at it. It just really didn’t. Yeah.
Because sometimes when I am listening to music, and if I get deep into the lyrics, I can feel, I can transcend and see  things from different points of views, and those kind of experiences are interesting to reflect on. So, perhaps maybe you have something like that that you wanted to share or might have experienced.
So, yeah, it wasn’t like that.
I know that in the new age, when you meditate your observing your own thoughts. And, that was the state that I wanted to be in. So, altering your consciousness, and you stepping outside of the cycle of your thoughts, and not trying to judge those thoughts but kind of observe them.
I know that Christianity is a different type of spirituality in which …. And one of the Bible verses say “Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” So, you are supposed to think about the words that Jesus spoke, and that’s the source of spiritual life.
. I don’t know if that makes sense, but that are the different types of spirituality that I’ve experienced. I don’t know if I made sense. So, sorry I went on. S1: You're good.
S2: Have you ever watched video of people taking LSD or something or stuff like that?
Oh no, it’s not like LSD.
Without drugs, for me, even with meditation, yoga, or with any spiritual activity, you can be able to contact something outside of this physical realm whether you agree to it or not because I know that if you come from an atheistic or agnostic worldview,
you might not believe in the supernatural, but for me, when I went into these spiritual activities, I just immediately figured out that there is a world beyond this one, and our reality is not just this physical, tangible world but this immaterial world also. So, I don’t know if that make sense.
S2; Well, I’m happy that you found your happiness.
Tatsuya; Yeah, definitely.
Professor; I think so too. You had so many hardships in your life. I was touched like you survived all of these things. I have been teaching you a couple of times, but I didn’t feel the hardship that you have experienced.  You looked so normal in my class, and I didn’t think of it, that you experienced such hardship in your life. And, I’m so glad that you survived.
Tatsuya; I actually don’t know how I survived
Professor: But you really did need Jesus, and your experience in sports and you  found out the way to live happily. That’s the best thing you know. Sometimes people kill people because they are not happy. But, you found the best way for you to live happily
Tatsuya; Yeah, you know, it’s just a miracle that Jesus even found me while I was in my brokenness because in my testimony, I said I really didn’t want to become a Christian, but He was graceful enough to lead me in the right direction. So, I’m just happy.
Professor; Thank you for sharing such a hard life. Maybe you will be relieved by saying this. 
Tatsuya: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m kind of relieved. 
Professor: Okay, thank you.
