How to Obtain Internal Unity

What do we mean by internal unity?  We are speaking of our spirit, soul or that of the mind.  We often speak on this blog about mind and body unity in order to obtain perfection as a being in front of God.  How do we begin to even fathom the possibility of unity within ourselves?


Moral and Spiritual Integrity

Religious or spiritual traditions have called this spiritual maturity or in other words perfection.  We have taught perfection to mean that one has a state of knowing how to do anything without having to gain the knowledge through learning, or never making a miscalculation and not having to eat or sleep.

We make it out to be some unobtainable goal or idea.  On the other hand, the true authentic definition of perfection is one who has become unfailingly true and sincere and is able to give of their physical energies of true love just as Jesus said:

You have heard that it was said,

You have heard“love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven . . . . If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? . . . Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect 

Matthew 5.43-48


Perfect Unity

The type of perfection Jesus speaks about is the result of conscience that is linked to God to not be blocked by our arrogance or selfishness and flow freely.  This is true moral and spiritual freedom.

The person who has attained this mind and body unity will feel the greatest joy of being able to readily act upon any worthy inspiration beaming from his heart and conscience.  This is likened to a well-learned musician who can play any tune that comes into their head.

This person is free to be ruled and used by true love.  Most people have experienced this.  "She kept on thanking me for caring for her child." Relates Marisa concerning her mother who had collapsed on the sidewalk from her illness.  She had to leave her young son crying when Marisa, who was a bystander, had offered to take care of her child for a few days.

“But I’m a mother myself—how could I not respond the way I did? It was nothing really.”

Jesus related this kind of story to the Good Samaritan who helped the man who was robbed when others ignored him.  This "nothing" comes about automatically when one repeatedly subdues the selfish interest of their body and the heart is then liberated to respond to the call of true love.  In other words, this is the state of releasing one's ego in order to live for the sake of the other.

God
Mind Body
Individual
Perfection

When this becomes the dominant mode of living, a person becomes a window of the divine heart and character. “The Supreme Reality stands revealed in the consciousness of those who have conquered themselves,” states the Bhagavad Gita (6.7-9).

Likewise,  Jesus declared,

“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father”

John 14:9


More than just a window, such a person is where God also wants to reside. Where he or she is, Heaven and Earth intersect.


The War Within

Do we truly witness this standard in our daily lives?

Our minds and bodies are usually at odds.  Sometimes people are generous and kind and at other times they are only caring about themselves.

We seem to live our lives based on bad emotions.  A caring mother may suddenly erupt in anger toward her beloved children after a long day.  A usually friendly boss who becomes stressed out over a key account may take it out on his employees.

In their deepest of heart, caring people truly want to act good and loving at all times, but this God-given sense within is usually overwhelmed by negative passions and desires.


“Our selfish desires and moral capacities are at war with one another,” states ethicist James Q. Wilson, “and often the former triumphs over the latter.”


This is the classic battle between mind and body.  Christians call it the battle between flesh and spirit; Jews, between the good and evil inclinations.  The body is overly occupied with its own concerns of taking care of itself and this overpowers the unselfish desires of the mind.  Individuals find themselves acting in ways they believe they should not—and not practicing what they should. They end up regretting too many things they have done.

St Paul spoke directly to this fact when he confessed,


“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”

Romans 7:15



How often do people find themselves saying the most hurtful  things to the ones they love the most? Or letting their selfishness ruin an important relationship?

How many times have we seen or said the most hurtful things to the one we love the most?  Or we let our own selfishness ruin an important relationship?

“She was the girl next door, we loved each other; we were thinking of getting married once we graduated from high school,” recalls a middle-aged man of his high school sweetheart.

“We had only kissed and hugged, but the guys were always pushing me to go for more. One night in senior year I had a few beers and tried to get real physical with my girlfriend and wouldn't let up. She got really upset with me, it was never the same again. I messed up a real good thing.”

This self-contradictory and often self-destructive state is what religious traditions call that of sin. 
The mind or conscience suffers under the oppression of the selfish instincts of the body, its desires relentlessly frustrated.  St. Paul ends his confession of self-contradiction with his question, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

In order to find perspective on this fight between mind and body some people have demonized the body and deny it as much as possible.  They then seek to escape within their mind which is closest to God and wait for freedom after their spirit has been released once they pass onto the next world.

This has been necessary for a time period when there was no greater teaching to free us from the confines of our body through the Second Coming.  The Messiah is to give us God's words that will liberate us not just from spiritual sin, but physical sin.

The body is essential for spiritual growth.  It is part of God's order to have an inner and outer nature.  the body only needed to be controlled after the flesh dominated the mind after the Fall.

We say that we are just like the animal and we follow our instincts like those in the animal kingdom and can't help many things we do under the rules of the flesh.  When we observe the animal kingdom, we see that nature is not self-destructive and unreliable in potential like we human beings are.  In other words, when we are subjugated by selfishness this is unnatural and is contrary to God's design.

Humans repel God and invites evil.  

There is no betrayal and no conflict within God's nature of true love.  Therefore, God cannot connect to a being whose mind and body are at war.  He will not be able to find His image in them.  This means that in losing His connection with human beings, He cannot fully delight in His children to degree in which He created us.

Moreover, He cannot manifest through His children as He would want so He cannot trust them. Consider the Heavenly Father’s many expressions of pleasure in the obedient Moses—

“I am pleased with you and know you by name”

Exodus 33:17

Yet when Moses disobeys Him and yields to his own anger, He forbids him to lead the people
into the Promised Land. Numbers 20.12


Because each individual is fighting a battle within themselves, we have an even harder time seeing God within others as well.  It is much easier for us to see depravity than goodness in others.  This is not the natural process of creation, this contradiction is the reversal of the proper order.

The body oppressing the mind is the very definition of evil and immorality.

There are two worlds: power, wealth and sexuality on one hand and intellect, imagination and love on the other.  When these two powers are in the presence of smallmindedness and self-centeredness we exhibit individuals who rarely live in service to others, but live in service only to oneself.  This is how America has come from its greatness of living for others and for God to losing hope.

Thus, every kind of pathology and iniquity is possible. Mind and body disunity is a fundamental condition for evil to manifest itself within the individual. It makes true love impossible.


The Challenge of Self-Discipline

Because of the power of the body over the mind, people must struggle mightily to restore their proper inner relationship in connection to God. The essence of this training is self-discipline—the fruit of continuous practice of good deeds by curbing the more body-centered desires to conform to those of the mind.

Theodore Roosevelt once said, “With self-discipline most anything is possible.” Self-discipline is fundamental to character growth, which in turn is fundamental to the capacity to give unchanging love.


“Before you desire to control the universe,” Reverend Moon has said, “you must first be able to completely control yourself.”

Such a thought has echoes throughout the world religions. “Who is
strong? He who controls his passions,” states the Jewish Mishnah (Abot 4.1).

The Sikhs have a saying, “With the conquest of my mind, I have conquered the whole world” (Adi Granth, Japuji 28,M.1).

In the Hindu Upanishads, the self is described as a rider, the body as a chariot, the intellect as the charioteer and the mind as the reins. The physical senses are likened to the power of the horses thundering down the mazes of desire (Katha Upanishad 1.3.3-6).

In this image we can see that self-discipline is strong and the desires of the flesh enslave a person.

Self-discipline requires faith perseverance, and courage especially with the free society of 'do whatever you want" flows against the trend of training the body for good deeds.  It is the moral direction of the will.

A man who admits to his wife that he has an attraction to a co-worker requires moral will.  Also, a young woman who runs from door-to-door to alert other students that the dorm is burning and the teenage boy who denounces bigotry being practiced in his neighborhood are examples of moral integrity and will.


The Key to Reaching Any Goal

In order to realize even practical goals, one must have the will to suppress the body's harmful impulses, resist unhealthy attractions, and delay immediate gratification.

A study was conducted years ago with a group of children where each were given one marshmallow.  They were told that if they waited they would then receive another marshmallow as an award.  Some children immediately ate the marshmallow exempting them from getting another one.

Then there were others who wanted to control their bodies and not immediately eat the treat in order to obtain the second marshmallow by distracting themselves and were rewarded with a total of two marshmallows.

Then there was a follow-up study years later when the children graduated from high school.  The study showed that the children who were able to wait for the second marshmallow grew up to be more confident, persevering, trustworthy, and had better social skills than the children who did not delay immediate gratification.  The ones who did indulge in the one marshmallow first without waiting for the reward were more troubled, resentful and selfish.

Self-Destruction
Conflict
Sinful, jealous, anxious and easily upset.
 .

Therefore, if one learns self-control and discipline at an early age, this sets up a pattern that leads to even greater self-mastery.

Other research confirms that adolescents who have learned self-discipline enjoy increased self-confidence, affording them greater resistance to the appeal of negative peer groups.

These teenagers who have learned to control their body's instincts are less likely to cut classes, abuse drugs or alcohol or get involved in sex. They have less anxiety and depression and perform better in school.  Team sports, after school activities and interests in the arts have kept many students occupied with good activities instead of heading for trouble.

Certainly they are also in a better position to be responsible sons and daughters, loyal friends, faithful
spouses and sacrificial parents.


The practice of self-discipline also leads to respect for legitimate authority.


“In self-discipline one makes a ‘disciple’ of oneself,” writes William Bennett. “One is one’s own teacher, trainer, coach and‘disciplinarian.’”

When a person exhibits mind and body unity, they have less need for social control, but have more appreciation for it.  Democracy was founded on this very concept of a citizenry that was self-governed by the power of religion and education instead of the communistic view of total control.

The founder of the Boston settlement in America, Robert C. Winthrop, stated:

“The less [societies] may have stringent state government, the more they must have individual self-government . . . . Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them, or by a power without them. . . .”

An individual who is self-controlled makes a better neighbor and citizen.



Fostering Mind and Body Unity

Contemporary society’s fondness for maximum individual freedom and autonomy presents challenges to those who would discipline themselves, and who would strengthen the moral will of those under their care.

At the same time the society also designs less external controls on the individual's behavior and responsibility than the traditional norm.  This means that as the social norms are more lax on etiquette and sexual behavior, the more that an individual must have the laws of self-control living within them more than before.

Then on the other hand, there has probably never been less social support for individual self-control until the symptoms come to the surface sometimes too late to control.

America and the rest of Western society calls out for comfort and self-indulgence and it pokes fun at and scorns discipline and restraint as a threat to individual freedom.  In this type of thinking, to embody self-control in oneself or onto others goes against the cultural fallen norms.

Yet it is an essential task. “To conquer the realm of the body is an awesome responsibility which every person must undertake,” asserts Reverend Moon.

The religious traditions are clear in their recommendations of the path to mind and body unity. There are two basic means. One is to weaken the influence of the body by denying its desires.

“Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God,” exhorts St. Paul.

Romans 12.1


The other is to reinforce the strength of the mind through various methods, including prayer, study, respect for parents and other well-known measures.

The struggle for control of the appetites and passions does not have to lead to anti-physical, otherworldly excess.

The challenge is to set up the appropriate order between mind and body, so that
both can function in the best way.  We'll talk about these steps further in tomorrow's post.

Photos courtesy of : freedigitalphotos.net

Return for Tomorrow's Post: How to Weaken the Body's Harmful Desires

This text was taken from and rewritten from the textbook: True Love Chapter, Mind and Body Unity

Return to God's lineage

Could you have imagined that heaven and hell both exist within each person's mind?  As there exist hell, there also exist heaven in spirit world.  If you live according to your original God-given mind, you are automatically in heaven.  On the other hand, if you solely follow your physical desires, you live in hell. 

In one person lives two people and there are two worlds in this world.

Just as there exist good people, there are evil people, good and evil nations and good and evil worlds.  Two opposing forces are always in conflict.  When the world finally ends struggle and make a complete unified foundation of peace centered on our perfected inner selves, then we will begin to see the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. 

Where do we begin to solve the issue of struggle in the world?

We go back to the beginning of all human struggle.  The origin of sin began with the fall of Adam and Eve.  Their fall caused each person to have two blood lineages. 

The first human ancestor's obeyed the enemy of God and obtained his blood lineage and passed on this fallen lineage unceasingly generation after generation. 

Our original mind is connected to God's lineage.  This is where you hear the old adage, "Let your conscience be your guide". 

One who follows their conscience 100% can become a perfected individual.  Good and evil cannot become one.

Who did Adam and Eve resemble and relate to the most before the fall? 

They resemble God.  God is our father, we say this as people of faith, but is God really our father?  How can a True Father and a True Child  have two different blood lineages?  Does God have a conflict between His mind and body?  The unity between God's mind and body are absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal.

How does man connect to God?  Through one man, we lost our connection to God, through one man, Jesus Christ, man and God can be united.  With a representative of God born on earth, we as adopted sons and daughters can unite with God as our adoptive Father. 

Now in the Completed Testament Age, the Returned Messiah restores God's lineage to mankind lost from the first man and woman who were to become True Parents of all humankind through the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.  In other words, the Messiah takes a true wife and bears True children reversing the mistake of Adam and Eve.

"If you can say that you are one with God, no one should ever be able to separate you from Him. Your body wants to go one way, but your mind wants to go the other way. Which way should you go? You sometimes reach such turning points, don't you? How can God be with someone who is in a chaotic state? Those whose mind and body are in struggle cannot enjoy an eternal relationship with God. That is the decisive conclusion." SMM

We say that we are the son and daughter, but what does that mean?  How does one come into existence?  Through the father's and mother's blood lineage.  The father's life and love and mother's life and love become one together through the children.  You are the product of your parents' love, life and blood lineage. 

You should not live with a complicated heart and mind. No matter how difficult the situation you are in is, you should not complicate your mind by doing things solely for your own benefit and for your own sake.

"Even in the most difficult circumstances, if you try to make others happy and benefit others a hundred times more than yourself, you will be able to find a way to have the situation in hand. I say, "Amen." Does God have a confused and chaotic heart?" 

Do we have such a heart?

No matter what how difficult or confusing the situation is, we should remember God's ultimate goal for us.  He wants to save you and me, make us happy, to always do good for us and give us many blessings.  If we carry the same attitude of God, we will be able to control any situation no matter how hard it may seem.  Each one of us has this ability.  Think Like God should be our new slogan.

We should really see the difference between true love and false love.  Even if the whole world is turned upside down in chaos, you can always find the center of control once you choose the path to live for the sake of others for their sake.  No obstacle will be able to stand in front of you on your path. 

This is why God throughout the thousands of years of turmoil, heartache and pain to bring about world restoration, never was confused or had a chaotic heart.  This is the principle in which we should all adapt.

"When I am busy, I usually visit many places and meet many people in a day. But I can handle meeting various people and visiting various places. How complicated and changing can my situation be? If I were doing all of that for my own sake, I would be really busy calculating how much benefit I get from here and how much I make from there."

Once we live a life of giving and forgetting how much we have invested, everything in our life becomes simple.  We start to live by principle.  Give and forget.  It is that simple.  Imagine how the world would be if every human lived by this principle.  Even the most hectic and complicated lifestyle becomes simple when one lives this way.  Nothing is complicated.  Wherever they go they will find that everything fits in place perfectly.


Blood Lineage

The Western culture has not learned the importance and value of blood lineage. 

Your body's cells are connected directly to generations of your ancestors.  The blood of your ancestors is alive in each and every cell of your body.  We must be proud of our lineage, but can God be proud?

You are linked to your ancestor's fallen bloodline.

You were supposed to be born directly into God's blood lineage, but instead were born as the fruit of the satanic blood lineage. 

The Unification Church testifies to the Messiah returning in our age preparing our heavenly blood lineage.  Evil will not last forever! AMEN!  You should know that the blood lineage which you carry is a satanic blood lineage.  You live in a fallen world born of a hellish lineage.  If you follow your bodily desires, you live in hell, if you follow your conscience, you are in heaven.

We should deny our fallen body and follow our Godly original mind.  Our body desires to eat, sleep, make love with different people and lives only for itself.  The heavenly way tells you to fast, make prayer conditions, serve God, shed blood, sweat and tears for others and make sacrifices.  This seems like death to the fallen body;those who want to die shall live and those who want to live shall die. 

That is the final conclusion.


Your Body's True Owner

Is a woman the owner of her own sexual organ?

This is the answer given by Father Moon:

"No, it exists for her husband. You women must understand this! The owner of a woman's sexual organ is her husband. The eternal owner is her husband. Before, it belongs to her husband, it belongs to her parents. Before, that it belongs to God. Whom does the man's sexual organ belong to? His wife. Without realizing the true owner of your sexual organ, how can you say that it is yours?

So living life without marrying is the greatest among sins because it denies the ancestry; wife denying her husband, husband denying his wife, parents denying their children are the worst of sins. It destroys the heavenly law. It leads to the entire lineage coming to an end in a single generation."

No one truly understands how extremely infinitely large spirit world is.  When we look at the world today, we can think how much hell is filling up and how empty Heaven must be.

God absolutely wants people on earth to create true ideal families and reproduce as much as possible to populate the Heavenly Kingdom.  How can one want to remain single when they know this truth about God. 

God is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal, so His blood lineage has the same quality and will be unending.  The satanic lineage has none of these characteristics and has an end.  Therefore, we should be proud to have the chance to obtain the pure heavenly blood lineage through the Marriage given by the Messiah which is called the Blessing.  On the flip side, the satanic lineage abhors  the heavenly lineage and they can never touch, see or feel it.

The Messiah and his wife are called the True Parents.  They give the blessing to those who follows God directly through the words of the Completed Testament.  Their families are the ones to inherit God's lineage-they do not inherit True Parents' lineage.  They inherit God's direct lineage and then engraft to the True Parents' lineage.  This was Jesus' hope and desire two thousand years ago.

This was the hope God had for Jesus-to find a bride, marry and give the marriage blessing to his disciples spreading good lineages across the world.  By our day and age, we would experience heaven on earth by now. But because his disciples "did not know the time of their visitation" and "could not yet understand things not of this world" Jesus had to go the way of the cross to save humankind. 

If Adam and Eve had obeyed God and waited for the time of their maturity, when and how would they connect to God's love, life and lineage?

 When Adam and Eve were married directly by God.  We have come to believe in modern society that the first man and woman were married before they were banished from the Garden of Eden. This is not so. 

God did not directly give marriage to Adam and Eve.  The fall occurred because man and woman misused their sexual organs without God's permission and were immediately banished.  The original plan was for them to be blessed into marriage by God and unite with Him representing his external form based on God's internal characteristics. 

How were we to unite in this way? 

Through their pure use of their sexual organs as True Husband and True Wife, this is where our first love was to begin.  With this unity of Adam and Eve in love, there would be no way for either of them to be tempted by Satan to fall.  Their pure power of love would have been stronger than Satan's fallen love.

Then when this love base is established, Adam and Eve's children as the third generation would automatically be born with a direct connection to God.
 
No one can deny that.

This is the absolute principle to realize the ideal family. You need to have the third generation. That is the only way, God, Adam and Eve and their children can create the four-position relationship of God-man-woman, husband and wife, parent-child and siblings centered on God.

Even God cannot destroy this four-position foundation. God inevitably has to protect it. But Satan tries to destroy it. With what?

With the greatest power.  Knowledge, money, extreme power?  No...with love.  Satan has false love and engrafted to Adam and Eve when they obeyed his words to use their love, instead of God's word to wait until maturity to partake in love. 

This false love has been inherited by the 7 billion people on this earth, no matter how rich, famous or great their family lineage may seem.  Every person not blessed into Holy Marriage given by the Messiah is under satanic dominion and not connected to the direct lineage of God.

We at best are adopted sons through the life of Jesus.


Mind and Body Unity

When the struggle of your mind wants to go toward the good way, but your body struggles to take you in the wrong direction you should stop and think, "Which is stronger?  My godly mind or my satanic body?" 

Surely our answer should be that our Godly side is stronger than the satanic blood lineage.  Then you should kick and weaken your body.

What tempts our mind to struggle.  It is simple.  Eating, resting and making love outside of God's dominion.  Our desire for these things are the problem.  And making fallen false love is the main enemy.  Our body loves these things the most.  Satan uses these three doors.  To go in the right direction, we should break apart from these selfish desires which does nothing for God.

So, the desire to eat is a problem. Many people are reading this today. All of you like to swing your heads around to look for the food you like.

You are swinging the head of the devil when you do that. The true owner is someone who makes sure everyone else is well fed and then he eats the leftovers. God would eat the leftovers with a satisfied heart. For the sake of your children, do not play around. Do not recklessly engage in self-centered love.

Why is the desire to eat a problem?  Don't you need to eat to live? 

A true owner makes sure that others are well fed and happy and can eat leftovers with a satisfied heart.  This is God's thinking.  Satan watches for people who eat centered on themselves.

"Are you confident enough to follow what I have just said?  If it were officially decided that all the young people in the world should receive the blessing from Rev. Moon, then do you think that everyone should go that way or not? [They should.]"

Why?  That is the only way AIDS can be prevented. That is the best medicine to prevent the collapse of teenage morality and family destruction.  How can AIDS spread if young people wait for marriage and only share their sexual organs with with their partners?

Toward the end of each speech Father Moon gives direction to the congregation to pledge what they learned by raising their hands.  He has said that even if you think it is a difficult responsibility to fulfill, by pledging with your hands to heaven and trying your utmost effort to fulfill, even if you cannot, spirit world will aid you to complete your mission.

This is the last part of the speech in his own words:

"No government can prevent the moral decline of their society.

Even the best education cannot stop it. No economic or military power can stop the problems. Nothing can really solve such complicated problems. Only True Parents. It is not difficult for the True Parents to solve the problems of youth and of families, and it isn't a problem to build the Kingdom of Heaven. [Amen!]

You must raise your hands and say Amen.[Amen!] Now, we know what our families should do. Even God cannot pull us out. Not even True Parents can pull people out of heavenly unity once it is established.

Neither the power of the United States nor that of the world can take anyone away from it. It is the absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal unity. It is better than God is.

True Parents are the best of the king's messengers to pave the way for you to fly up to heaven directly. That is true. Where a bridge is needed, I build the bridge. Where mountains are too high, I give you an airplane. God's angels come and hold you in their bosom and fly with you. True Parents can make such things happen.

Let's say that you will have about a thousand generations of descendants in the future and already have about a thousand generations of ancestors. You can be the number one couple among all of them if you keep your purity absolutely like God, who is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal. You must be able to see that God is the first ancestor, and you are the second ancestor. That is what it means by saying that mine is the central family of the blessing."


Return for Tomorrow's Post: The Important Thing We Need Most


This text was rewritten and taken from the speech:

What Should Our Families Do?
Sun Myung Moon
January 29, 2001