“There is not a single thing that lacks an inherent principle,” writes the Confucian philosopher Chu Hsi
The Great Learning 5
There are principles and a natural law that govern the nature of each existence.
The principles that govern the natural world and the human world have many parallels to one another. This is because they both have a single origin, God. The difference is that humanity has been given free will in order to choose to live in accordance with their own God-given natures or not.
From a different perspective, these principles also reveal much about the Creator to us:
Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.
Romans 1:19-20
The Divine Principle gives insight about how true love has a counterpart in the world which tells us a lot about God's characteristics. We will first define these principles and the general principle that is active within the larger universe.
Principles for True Love
1. Maturing Through Responsibility
As each person fulfills the responsibility of true love, they grow into the fullness of humanity.
Everything in the universe automatically grows in maturity ... except humans. A person's reaches the mind's potential when the individual exercises his own portion of responsibility. This portion or free will has been equated to 5% where God's responsibility is 95%. Human's portion though greatly smaller than God's, take 100% effort in order to fulfill.
Responsibility is a rudder to steer a person into a life of goodness and morality.
Character educator Thomas Lickona boiled virtues education down to the two major ones of “Respect” and "Responsibility".
He said that educators had found over and over again that respect and responsibility covered all of the virtues. Responsibility is the major umbrella virtue and is pivotal to a fulfilled life. It encompasses the development of most other virtues needed for growth of an individual.
When we look at responsibility from the Principle point-of-view, we see that it is a gift from God. This allows man to become participants in their own creation instead of being born 'ready made'. God gave us chose in responsibility for the enhancement of human beings instead of making everything automatic which is found in nature.
Reverend Moon has said that if God intervened too much in humankind’s responsibility, their
"honor and dignity would be nullified". It would be like a mother or father that held onto did all of their child's homework or never let go of the handlebars as their child learns to ride a bike holding them up instead of learning on their own eventually.
As the common saying goes, “What you are is God’s gift to you. What you become is your gift to God.”
We have a responsibility together with God to create and shape ourselves into the types of people we want and are meant to be. We will do better with our growth when we take responsibility and participate in creating our own destinies.
2. Mind and Body Unity
The previous two posts give a more focused point on how to obtain Mind and Body Unity.
Mind and body unity—the mind leading the body—permits a person to give true love.
All things are composed of external and internal dimensions, with the external following the internal. In the case of humans, the body is to obey the mind.
3. Giving and Receiving
We generate and sustain true love through give and take action. When we give first, investing continually and receiving, true love can come through.
Interaction is an amazing phenomenon. When we observe nature entities from the subatomic particle to the solar system from male to female animals to symbiotic plants, we see that they all form a relationship and solidify it through giving and receiving of elements of themselves.
From a large nuclear reaction in the heart of the sun to biochemical reaction in a small living cell, what powers all movement is development and reproduction.
Even the very existence of things depends on give and take; the raging drama of a summer storm would not exist except for the intense give and take between hot and cold, high pressure and low, positively and negatively charged.
“All God’s creations borrow from each other,” reads a Jewish Midrash, “day borrows from night and night from day . . . the sky borrows from the earth, and the earth from the sky”
Exodus Rabbah 31.15
Interrelatedness and interdependence abound.
4. Subject and Object Partnership
When a person respects their role in a relationship and fulfills their responsibility, true love flows. This is true whether they are initiating or responding, leading or supporting. Every entity establishes one of these position in the course of every interaction in the universe.
People in the subject mode may provide leadership or impart knowledge; those in the object mode may offer support or receive instruction. For instance, in the role of a family, the parents are in the subject partner role and the children are in the object partner position.
A physician is subject, patient is object, the quarterback is the subject partner in certain football plays while the teammates are his object partners. A manager and the rest of the employees are also in a subject-object relationship.
Then what would the ultimate subject and object partnership be? This would be between the Creator and His creation. When God initiates in the relationship, His object partner which is humanity is to respond.
This is the import of the Christian declaration, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
John 3.16
God inspires prophets with His Word; humankind responds by heeding it.
5. Masculine and Feminine Harmony
All entities in nature exist in a paired structure—male and female or positively
and negatively charged—and each attracts its complementary opposite to form
productive relationships.
The harmony between men and women creates a base for true love to develop and become deeper. Therefore, men and women need each other for support.
Masculine and feminine trying to find balance in order to unite expresses a principle that runs throughout all of existence. When these two polarities harmonize and give off a beautiful tension, it fills the universe with energy, structure, life, beauty and joy.
We see this exampled in a white frosty mountain overlooking a green valley, a peacock with colorful long tail feathers on display to attract a peahen who in turn will bear his young. An electron weighs less than a thousandth of a proton, yet they precisely balance to comprise an atom.
Reverend Moon has said, “Beauty arises from the fusion of extremes into a harmonious oneness".
6. Investing Towards Oneness
There is an innate want for unity between complementary partner which initiates the effort needed to realize true love. Complementarities like male and female begin as separate beings in the world but are drawn into oneness.
We see these natural uninhibited occurrences arise between polarities in nature, but when we look in the human world of man, we see various conflicts. In real life, men and women are meant to unite their opposite attributes, but do not easily get along. At times they may seem to be enemies.
If you were to put a group of men and women together in the same room, you will find that the conversation will lean toward the differences and confusion between men and women and possibly their relationships.
“Women talk too much,” “men are so insensitive,” “females are just a heap of emotions,” “all men think about is sex”—the complaints are predictable.
The history of men and women is fret with misunderstandings, mistrust, abuse and exploitation. One gender has taken advantage of the other's need and natural dependence and used their gifts to overpower the other for eons.
Men have bullied women with their physical strength, women have controlled men through their sexual allure cause this clash between the sexes. This evil legacy began in the very first family at the beginning of history which has been taught in all the great traditions.
This disunity between men and women is also due to the different "culture" that each gender shares. Tons of books speak about the fact that women and men live, think and communicate differently from the other.
From God's point of view this was not meant for disharmony or for power struggle between the two genders, but for them to unite and naturally arises during the course of each gender's development.
7. Unity Around a Higher Purpose
Unity between people when they focus on a higher purpose creates the basis for true love. When beings have a shared purpose, this will lead toward unity. In hierarchies, individual purposes serve the whole.
The most basic of shared projects is the relationship itself.
Family members, teammates and business partners may often wisely make substantial sacrifices for the sake of their alliance, what psychologist Terry Hargrave calls “we-ness.”
The vitality of this “we-ness” depends on how much the participants can favor the interest of the relationship over their own interests, and seek to reach their personal goals and meet their individual needs through the relationship instead of around or in spite of it.
Any good sports team knows this.
“In order to have a winner, the team must have a feeling of unity,” says legendary University of Alabama Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant. “Every player must put the team first—ahead of personal glory.”
Long wed couples know this too and make many sacrifices for the marriage. Lovemaking within a caring marriage is a metaphor for this idea:
Each partner seeks to satisfy the other and ultimately comes to surrender to their union. Ego can get in the way of this union, but one should recognize that rather than losing anything in this surrender, each self gains deep joy and a meaningful connection.
Return for Tomorrow's Post: Where Does Love Begin
Text rewritten and derived from the textbook: True Love, Chapter Mind and Body Unity
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