Let's Plant Seeds of True Love

“When you plant a seed of love, it is you that blossoms." Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati If love does not exist, then oneness cannot  be achieved. When two separate entities become united into one, there are no such words on their own that can bring this unity about. Two can become one through material objects, but once the material are gone, so does the unity. Also, if there was a third party which brought this unity of the two things together, unity disappears once the third person separate.   In order for two to be one eternally, there has to be love. It will not work without love. From the viewpoint of God, the universe's essence is love. If you were to look at the world from God's viewpoint, the universe is the essence of love. Through true love, unification automatically will come about.  Once we love at the level higher than Satan's selfish love, then, Satan will also be pulled in. We can look at love in this way: God created Heaven and this earth and gave it to us as the utmost goodness and love. The power of love bridges the gap between upper and lower and transcends space and time.  Many romantic movies use this basic standard of the rich man falling in love with the pauper woman. What is witnessed in the presence of love? Wouldn't it make sense that things that are far apart would come close together when love is around? Why do we all like love?  It is because it can bring things that are really far apart come close and bring them into one in unity. Who or what power will be able to bring the different cultures together?  We have seen humanity try through politics, military or cultural power. None of these certain powers will bring about lasting unity and peace on this earth. So, what will bring about this oneness we all seek? It is simply the great power of true love. Once you see from this pure viewpoint, we see why we like love.  People like love the most because it is the subject that brings everything and makes it theirs. There is no one alive that is so cold that they cannot be melted by the power of true love. When we see how great and powerful Godly pure love is and observe humanity, we see that people do not know the full potential for love to bring about world peace. This is why the Messiah comes to teach us about the true power of the original love of God. If there is a person who has a true loving heart, they can unite extreme enemies who once vowed to kill one another.  They can only do this through the power of true love. Love can unite the most extreme and opposite things. What is a man or a woman? We can see them as poles.  In the original world God created, if a woman was to tell another woman that she was IN love with her because of her soft hands, this would be offensive. Even though in our current society, all situations are acceptable, the idea of two women would be viewed as unideal in God's heaven because they are of the same polarity. Men and women are on the opposite poles of one another.  What brings about unification? The method that can unify all things is the idea of living for the sake of another. For example, if we want to unite North and South Korea, do we do so by the familyship of Kim Il Sung? Could he bring about unity of the two enemy countries? Those of faith do not follow that way. Everywhere love dwells is good and desirable.   If we could come to a position in North Korea to give out love eternally, the love given to the higher degree will cancel out the North's false advertisements which control the people South Koreans could unite with the North Koreans by excelling beyond in every field including education.  This way, the North Koreans would volunteer and unite with the South Koreans even if they were ordered not to do so.   Goodness prospers whenever it overcomes difficulty, and it always prevails. It may seem on the course of battle in this religious life of faith that it is difficult for good to persevere, but this one principle of love ALWAYS brings victory.  Unity happen as long as it heads in the right direction. Those who live by this simple principle will definitely triumph no matter how dire their current situation may seem. Any organization that lives by, teaches and spreads the philosophy that personal gain is not for the individual, but is a gain for the nation and the world, that entity will not perish even if the world does. Since Unification Thought, Divine Principle teaches this, it will not perish.     Unification cannot be achieved when we are indebted.     While one is withheld in the realm of owing debt, there cannot be unification. There is no way for the Kingdom of Heaven while there is still debt to be paid by humanity.  A nation becomes a rich nation once there is a means to pay back the debt to the other countries which includes interest. America a once flourishing, idealistic country, now has an economy of debt. Q. Where shall we head? We should go in search of love.  From a human standpoint, we view the world as great.  We have become a world that is hailed as wonderful in the context of people accumulating wealth, ruling over the world, becoming knowledgeable, but these have no true meaning in the realm of true love. We should become one through true love and unite mind and body with our Heavenly Parent on a horizontal (physical) and vertical(spiritual) level. If there is a man and woman who has reached such a unity of spirit and body, they will aligned to God's vertical love. This is the only just as our flesh is attached to bone, man and woman unite with God's love. Return for Tomorrow's Post: Where Shall We Go? This post was rewritten and derived from the textbook Cheon Seong Gyeong, Book Thirteen, Chapter 5, Section 3,4

God is the Center of Love

God is the center and subject of true love for eternity. 

While living the religious way of life, if you knew about the suffering you would have to face, would you refuse to go any further when you met such hardships?

Maybe you could think that your suffering is nothing compared to the suffering God has had to endure for thousands of years when He lost His children.

Who put God in the suffering position: God Himself or man?

God suffers because of the disobedience of man.

Yet, God does not blame man at all.  He takes the beatings and still tries to save man from his wretched position he has fallen.  When we understand God's miserable position, how can we refuse to go this difficult path of carrying our own cross?

We should think that even if death comes to us, that we will be able to praise God for His faith and endurance.  We should see that we have received little persecution compared to Him. That should be everyone's position.

Is it better to give up when it is difficult, or to comfort God and tell Him you understand his suffering and you will bear His burden as His representative and suffer on His behalf?

God is the subject and master of all of creation, the King of the universe, yet He has never once claimed His authority over everyone.  Instead, He gave us choice, free will to either serve Him or not.  This is evidence to the true greatness of God.

God is always trying to reach us, but Satan set up blockades.  

God has no way to communicate directly with His people and give His true love.

God has been suffering in this way without having honor or fame.  He waits for the moment of victory when He could have give and take with the center of true love.

This is not just a fantasy or a speech.

Think about it.  Throughout history, God has been rejected, deceived, betrayed by many, many people, yet He still believes and has hope to find the true one, the Messiah.

In order to communicate and have a mutual understanding of God, you must suffer and really pursue the same tasks as God has done.  How else will you have a true relationship with God? When such a person appears, He does not inherit everything at once.

There is no easy way to reach out to the center of true love; it is a road of suffering and pain. 

Even if you meet God without following the path of suffering, you would feel uncomfortable instead of happy because God was unable to fully open His heart all the way to you.  Therefore, the road to the center of love is a thorny one.

When we stand before true love, we must be conscious of how we appear in front of it.  Are we mediocre, do we love our spouse with a pure mind, do we have lukewarm love toward our children, or do we perform our church mission with half a heart?  This evaluation of ourselves in front of love is a serious thing.

You should not feel that you are ever alone, or by yourself in this dispensation.  

If the entire world becomes your enemy, but you know that this is the only way you can acquire the center of true love, nothing will stop you. This path that you walk while trying to reach the center of true love will destroy all your dignity and honor at once to make you humble, but for true love you still go in this way.  You must be willing to go this way even if you must lose everything in the process.

If you were to fail along the way, at least you can tell God that you never left this true path.  When you go with this attitude, there is no way you will betray God or give up.  Not even death will stop you from accomplishing the goal of obtaining true love.

If you have any thoughts of betrayal, this is the best time to repent.  We see people complain about the smallest things everyday, and they must repent for that.

First, check which -ism you have; second, you should check what love you have.

If you want to be linked to the center of love, you should already possess love within yourself.  Your love should be linked to the center.  

Adam and Eve should have served God, their Father, during the engagement period before they joined to Lucifer to have their family.

During the time of engagement, a couple should be careful how they relate to one another.  This time is for getting closer and love the Parent, God first.  It is fine to care for one another, but the way you communicate to one another is very important.

 Again, to reach the central true love a period of discipline is necessary. 

This is not a technique to make things difficult for people waiting to get married.  This is the shortest route to true love, and the best way to link to the center of love.

Third is position. Who owns your husband or wife? God is actually loaning you the person who is your husband or wife. Since their true owner is God, unless you are united in God's love there is no way you can have partnership with your mate. 

When you look at your husband or wife, look at him or her as being in God's position, on loan to you, and not your private property. Since you are united in one love with God and love Him most, you can love the person in God's position, your husband or your wife. That is natural. Then you can love them as much as you love God.

Some people coming to the Unification Church might see someone they think would be a good mate for them, but then they are matched with a person they consider insignificant.

How can they deal with the situation? Some of those people are conditional followers, who accept the Divine Principle, but not our way of marriage.

Without Principle there is no marriage, and without marriage there is no Principle. 

The two are one, all following the center of true love. In some rare cases people might wish their fiancée would die in the three years before the wedding comes so they can get another match.


Dr. Rev. Sun Myung Moon explains complaints of the matching for arranged marriages:

Why do I assume the heavy responsibility of matching everyone? I get no money or fee like any other professional. All the criticism comes to me while all the happy couples feel they are lucky and are not grateful enough to the True Parents. 

Why should I volunteer?

When I am matching people I can see their futures and what kind of life they will lead. Some people will have tragedy in their life, and in order to prevent such tragedy I must match them with certain types of people. I am not just looking at people horizontally, but vertically.

I have a philosophy of balance in matching, a harsh person needs to be balanced with someone softer needs someone strong. In machines, both hard and soft metals are needed to complement each other. 

People look only at the surface appearance in evaluating people, but a pretty woman and a handsome man together may lose everything and leave nothing behind.

In matching people I try to make a permanent base. I match from the viewpoint of central true love. Sometimes my methods look strange, or labyrinthine, and you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. But if the end result will be true love, I will go that way.

I have been controversial everywhere, in whatever I do, but I never volunteered for that. My goal is not fame; I am only looking at one thing, central true love. I never aimed at knowledge, money or power, but in pursuing true love everything else automatically came to me as a fringe benefit.

People have to recognize that now I am successful from the worldly point of view. If you truly believe in God and know He is almighty, then you have to accept that as naturally being the case. People reject me for many pragmatic reasons and feel threatened by me, but even though they oppose me, their original mind still knows that I am right. 

Suppose I consummated my life here and went to spirit world; God knows more than anyone how I lived to fulfill true love, and He would be the first one to feel I should no longer suffer and be lonely here on earth. At the same time, all people pursuing true love would know my value and would mourn my death.

Even the people who have never seen me on earth can understand true love through my teachings and way of life, and they will come to Belvedere (headquarters) to feel close to me, remembering how I spoke here.

Will they doze off? Why did you come this morning? You want to see central true love.

Why do you need me? I am the bridge which will lead you to the center of true love. Without me you cannot cross the river, so when I am away you want to know where your bridge is. Even if only a handful of people are here, if I am also here then the room feels full, but if I am not present then it feels empty, even if hundreds of people are here.

Once every several thousand years the rope passes overhead. The Unification Church is that rope, so we are the ones who grabbed it first. It is a once-in-a million opportunity, so would you just casually grab it with one hand? Or would you bite it and wind it around and around your body and legs so you can't be separated? 

You all have the rope, so how intensely would you become one with it? You are winding it not only around your body, but around your 360 homes you witness. and even the root of the rope will come down that is Home Church.

Return for Tomorrow's Post: True Love is the Reason for Existence

Liquidation and Blessing

The War Between Mind and Body

What is the most fearful war amongst all wars? 

The greatest damage you can experience in your life is the damage caused from the war between your mind and your body; greater than any calamities, tribulations -- or even devastation -- in the world caused by any other wars in history. You must know clearly that there remains a mountain of wreckage and debris caused by the various incidents of defeat of your mind. Your mind has been defeated numerous times in these battles, every day, between the mind and body. Yet, people are unaware of this fact.

However, you always remember any physical harm you have experienced. For instance, if you fell down, by tripping on a stone while you were walking on a street, you would remember clearly after one year; even you would not forget this for the rest of your life. You would recall an event saying, "I broke my foot right at this place, several decades ago, because I tripped and fell." You would never forget such a thing. On the other hand, there are countless people who would never think of or remember the defeats of their mind in the relentless war between their mind and body.

Considering this fact, no matter how loudly you may proclaim your own importance, you are really no more than a defeated soldier standing with a white flag in your hand. Originally, you were created to dominate your body, with the result of your mind being victorious, in the lifelong battle of mind and body. Yet, this ideal never came to pass; with the ensuing result that your mind and body each pursue contrary aims.

Your Worst Enemy

Then, what is the most fearful war among all wars? You must recognize that the war that continues centered on you and inside you is the most fearful in human history and may last forever.

What?

It is no comparison to World War II. "You" are in this eternal war within yourself. You must know that "you" are standing at the frontline of this theater in this eternal war.

The first human family started with false love and did not establish the perfected true love character of a true person, a true couple, and true parents. The fruit of false love, fallen mankind’s selfishness, destroys the true order, beginning with the discord of mind and body and expanding into division and struggle in the family, nation, and world.

The solution and cure for humankind’s affliction, therefore, is to return to God through the principle of restoration by indemnity. Through true love for others, you can stop the struggle between your mind and body and be restored into your original character of true love. Humankind needs to receive the blessing and create an ideal family from true parents who are the model of true love character. We need to restore the individual and true family and expand true love and goodness to the world level.

The strategy of Satan, who originated sin, is always to destroy the ideal of true family and to prevent true family from taking root and becoming substantialized. This led to God’s three headaches during the past 50 years. The first headache was communism, which denies God’s existence. The second is corruption and immorality. The third is the division and disunity among denominations and world religions.

Think about it. How many innocent people died because of communism?

Over 100 million were killed as a result of communism, and millions more were enslaved, starved, abused and wounded, and spent their whole life in suffering. But in addition to deaths and physical suffering, the crime of communism is even bigger: spreading false truth denying God and make men and women unable to find their ultimate value through connection to God.

Immorality, the second headache of God, is destroying families and countries and taking lives just as surely as an invading army. Moral corruption is one of the main causes of divorce, teenage pregnancies, crime, and drug addiction. The decline of morality is not limited to any single nation’s borders but is becoming the world’s common problem. The worldwide AIDS plague is a direct consequence of sexual promiscuity and moral decay. Through diseases such as AIDS, humankind's existence will be threatened.

How about God's third headache – the division and disunity within Christianity and between the world religions? For God, religious people are the conscience of the world. Religious people should have traditions and values and practical power to overcome evil. But instead they are divided. They antagonize and fight with each other. They have became incompetent and have lost the power to overcome evil and educate the world about the true way of life.


Importance of Man’s Portion of Responsibility

These three fundamental headaches are the direct result of the failure 50 years ago of those chosen to receive God’s message.

From God’s point of view, all of that suffering was totally unnecessary. All the misery, death, and destruction were not inevitable. It could have been avoided. If in the late 1940s, the religious world, centering on Christianity, had followed God’s revelation and become one with the true family ideal, then communism would have naturally declined. Also, through the influential leadership and example of each religion, the degeneration of youth, broken families, and AIDS would never have grown into a worldwide plague.

Confronting God’s three headaches, particularly communism, made those who fought it unpopular and controversial. Those who have done their research on the Divine Principle which this blog is based upon, they will know that the author was labeled a fascist and a religious charlatan. 

He was even jailed in the United States on trumped-up charges of tax evasion. Nevertheless, for 25 years, he been pouring out his heart, and energy to make the United States understand its global providential responsibilities.

Through his work in the Western Hemisphere and around the world, he was able to help the United States overcome communism. Now communism has almost disappeared. But immorality and social decay are systematically attacking the family. Modern thinking holds that the traditional family is only one kind of family and that even homosexuals can form a family and have children through adoption or artificial insemination.

This is being done without any thought of the dire consequences of undermining and destroying a fundamental biological, social, and spiritual unit that has been vital to human survival for tens of thousands of years. It is ironic that scientists warn of the threat to endangered species of plants and animals, but do not study far more seriously the consequences of family destruction.

Today God is asking us these questions: Will it be necessary to lose one-third of humanity before it is saved? Will we destroy the earth’s natural resources and environment before we learn to live in harmony with the creation as God originally intended? God will never give up! He will save this world, no matter what, and He will save it through the ideal and structure of the true family.

Return for Tomorrow's Post: Cheating is Cheater's Fault, No Exception!

Photos courtesy: freedigitalphotos.net

Speech titled "Realization of a Peaceful World by the Ideal of Family" given at the 4th Global World Peace Conference in Washington, D.C. 1997

Love Your Enemy = Nations Loving Nation

We all heard of the idea to love our enemy from many saints, religious leaders and prophets. Why did God make efforts to teach us that loving our enemy is important? Satan says to God, "In order for You to be God, You must always maintain the standard of ideal, eternal love."

 God replies, "Yes, that is true." Then Satan says, "God, when You made me the archangel, did You do so just in order to love me temporarily, or to love me forever?" And God says, "Forever." If God loved only temporarily, then He would be like Satan. By the same token, if one has no standard of loving forever, he cannot show God's dignity to Satan. In order for God to be God, He must love Satan no matter how much Satan is opposed to Him.

Satan says, "I fell and became evil, but You who are good can never change, and You can never do the things I do. I enjoy attacking and fighting, but You hate fighting. You must be silent even if You are beaten." Hence, God cannot forcibly resist Satan's aggression. Why? God cannot crush Satan just like that. He must love him unchangingly so that Satan will finally come to say, "Oh, indeed You are God. I surrender to You."


Centered on True Love

No matter how much suffering you may have to experience, you have to love the archangel and even your worst enemy who attacks you daily until the ideal of heaven is completely established in this world. God's hands are tied by that demand. As you go on your way to the Heavenly Kingdom, Satan will test you. Just as God must love Satan and let Satan surrender to Him in that way, so should God's children love the archangel if they want to go to the Heavenly Kingdom.

How much love would that take?

Jesus demonstrated this exact act through his words and finally through his actions when he was spat upon, kicked, tortured on his way to the cross.  Jesus did not have one moment of revengeful thought or hate as he went on his wretched walk to the cross.  He then was ridiculed to the end as he told God to forgive the lost for they did not have any way to overcome being dominated by Satan and I give my body in place of their way to be freed from him.

Even though you are persecuted by all of this world, which is the realm of the enemy, you must love the evildoer with your whole heart. That is the condition you have to fulfill.

God is most concerned about that condition.  Those people who are striving to be God's children should also be most concerned about it. This standard of loving might appear simple, but it is the very boundary line between God and Satan. No one has fully understood this before. In order to go beyond this boundary, God cannot even regard His enemy as an enemy, and He must not take revenge.

The conclusion for us is to love our enemy. When Jesus prayed for those people who were killing him, it was the greatest victory. If he had hated his enemies when he was about to die, then the providence of God would not have been successful.

But as Jesus overcame his difficulties through love, Satan began surrendering, thus Jesus obtained the qualification of God's perfected child. You have to come to the point where you are able to say, "Satan, don't you agree that I am a child of God?" and have Satan concede, "Yes, that's true."

You must be able to say confidently, "I'm following God's direction, expanding His sphere of love from the individual level through the family, clan and nation, to the worldwide level. You have no objection to that. Right, Satan?" And Satan must say, "I have to agree with you because it's the Principle."

In this way the individual spreads this type of altruistic love to the family and children, then to the society and to the nation.  Nations with citizens who love like this will love other nations as they global brothers and sisters.

This is the way God has proceeded with His dispensation, centering upon Christianity. It has been the path of sacrifice and martyrdom and, through its bloody history, Christianity has been a movement to expand God's love to the family level, the societal level, the national level, all the way to the worldwide level. Through the standard of Christian love, which loves the enemy, enemy nations can be conquered; the enemy is won over.


Return for Tomorrow's Post: Only Belief in Jesus Not Enough

Today's post is taken from the teachings of Dr. Rev. Sun Myung Moon studied and taught the bible for over 80 years.  He also wrote the Divine Principle which breaks down the bible from God's point of view of bring His children back to his heavenly ideal on earth.