Childhood Relationships Needed to Mature the Heart

There is also an individual order by which individuals govern themselves, which is significant in how they relate to others.

The orderings of these relationships, affects the way the realms of heart function.

The love of a mother and child nurtures and harmonizes the developing relations between the child and his or her siblings and peers.

The harmony of the child's realm of love affects the sibling's or peer's realm of love.

For example, one Saturday afternoon, Erica's 8-year-old son, Tim, and his friend were playing with Lego blocks.

Usually Tim gets along with his friend, but this particular afternoon they were quarreling.  Tim did something out of his character.  When he and his friend disagreed over a Lego piece.  He tore apart his friend's Lego construction and threw the pieces all over the floor.

His mother recognized that this behavior came from the busy week's toll on his relationship week with her and his emotions were running on empty.

Because of her motherly instinct, she took him aside and spent time alone with him.  She spent time holding him on her lap, speaking gently to him, and getting him involved in funny little finger plays.

After only a short time, Tim became calm and happy again, and went back to apologize to his friend.  He even offered to help his friend rebuild his toy construction he destroyed.

Tim needed this vertical connection with his mother in order to relate smoothly with his peers on a horizontal plane.

Often, a family’s problems involving children can be remedied by improving and solidifying the marriage. 

Psychologist John Rosemond testifies that when he and his wife shifted the center of their family life from the children to their marriage, getting the vertical order right, their children were more obedient, more respectful, more compliant, and—importantly—happier.

Rosemond likened a happy, healthy family to the solar system:   “The marriage was the nucleus of the family, the children were satellites that revolved around the nucleus like planets to a sun.”



A Healthy Ecology of Love

Relationships between the vertical and horizontal create a greater ecological system that encompasses all four realms of heart (parent's, children, siblings, spouse).

This becomes a support system that surrounds the individual and stimulates him or her needs to internally grow.

When this ecology is imbalance, people feel vulnerable and often try to fill this need in a substitute way.

This explains why a child latches onto her cousin as her 'older sister', the widower joins a dance club, and the infertile couple adopts a son.

For example, 14-year-old Elena is in the children's and sibling's realm.

When her complementary partners of parents, grandparents, and brother and sisters and maybe cousins, she enjoys a wealth of possibilities in terms of giving and receiving love and thus develop her character.  These relationships are necessary for growth in Elena's stage in life.

Jon, on the other hand, who is 27 year old may have different relational needs than Elena who is still a teenager.  He may be more challenged and fulfilled to mature by being invested in the spouse's and parent's realms.

He thrives best by having a good friend and children as reciprocal partners to relate with.

But this is in addition to the parents and siblings with whom he continues to have a relationship.  Jon's ecology of love includes all the four realms of heart.  The absence of any of these aspects will make Jon feel an emptiness in his life.


Ecology of Love

In an ideal world, people would progress naturally from realm to realm, nurtured by their partners in the realm and nurturing them back in turn.

We would achieve the necessary level of heart that resembles God's heart.

The reality of course is that humanity is far from the ideal.  There are forces that seem to prevent people from attaining the growth of heart they need in each realm.

A daughter who is becoming an adolescent may need her father's reassurance and support more than ever before, but he is struggling with finances and turns to alcohol to cope.

A mother who just gave birth to twins, may not be able to stretch her love resources to her husband and her babies which causes the marital relationship to breakdown just when she needs her partner the most.

An older sibling may say something to a younger brother or sister that was biting and stay with the children for years affecting his or her self-image.

We see that people are imperfect in their ability to love.  Yet, the realms of heart march on.

The abilities of other-centered love or love others than yourself are still too underdeveloped to cope with the demands of the realms.

This causes many difficulties.

Because of this, divorce, domestic and child abuse may result.  This inability to love can emerge as more subtle problems such as a mother who rather be her daughter's best friend and live vicariously through her

Many people may feel that they lack the heart to have concern and compassion, and do not have the ability to be refreshed from naturally giving true love.

Then people find themselves depleted.  This pattern of people who are immature in relationships raising immature people has multiplied ever since the disastrous interruption of the love relationships of parents, spouses children and siblings in the Garden of Eden.

Reverend Moon has said, “The Fall was initiated when one person claimed self-centered love. 

The one who proclaims love centered on himself, they deny the value of all other relationships in his desire to make himself the center of the universe.

Such a person seeks to bring benefit only to himself, and the disease began when this desire entered ther ealm of love.

The first parents were thus cut off from God and from one another and started a negative pattern from their brokenness and immaturity.

We see these patterns continue and proliferate to this day.

People who are not able to fulfill the earlier realms of heart, they must perform the later realms of heart and do so badly.

Psychotherapist Arthur Janov writes, “The major reason I have found that children become neurotic is that their parents are busy struggling with unmet infantile needs of their own . . . In this way the sins of the parents are visited on the children in a seemingly never ending cycle.”

The family needs great infusions of God’s love in order to repair the brokenness and restore health. 

A society that had families who exhibited true love, this would be a world of peace and harmony – a true Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

Religious history has been one of God and humankind desperately seeking to repair and restore the original love relationships where individuals, families and societies from.  Thus, they can be healed and made whole.

Therefore, it is important to understand how the four realms of heart in the family work and need mending.



Return for Tomorrow's Post: Importance of Children Growing in Love


This post was rewritten and derived from the religious textbook “Educating for True Love” which was written by a team of writers to explain the philosophy of Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

Why God Create Night/Day, Seasons?

A curious child may ask such a question: why doesn't the sun stay up instead of darkness come and need to create light?

Even as adults we may wonder such a question.  If the sun was always up all day in and out, would morning be as stimulating?

We often say that it is a glorious morning a bright morning, but if the sun was up all the time would we notice that it was glorious and bright?

To have the sun up all day would become boring.

However, in our reality, to have the sun come up and the different seasons as a part of the human experience is a stimulating and exciting feeling.

The sun and moon 'returning' every morning and night has a rhythm that harmonizes and brings together all of the symbols of love.

 

Q. Where can you find the root of life?

The root of life begins with parents who symbolize true God and have not fallen.

God created the universe and humans to be in His image to reflect His dual characteristics. Adam is the manifestation of God's male characteristics and Eve is the representation of God's female characteristics.

When we see God and human beings from this perspective, we see that even though we say "Heavenly Father" and conceive of Him as one being, actually the concept of God includes the idea of God being our "Heavenly Father and Mother".

So, the debate of whether the creator is male or female can be shown to have both male and female qualities since He has created humanity from Himself.

 

Human beings: temples for God to dwell

 

 

 

 

Have you ever wondered what would have happened if Adam and Eve had not fallen?

They would have been able to become completely one with God and stand in the same position as Him. They would inherit and experience the joy He had in His great work of creation.

This would have been the original relationship formed between God and human beings. Then as unfallen beings, we would have become true temples where God would reside eternally.

Once Adam and Eve had matured, which means once they their body temple had been built completely spiritually and physically, He would have dwelled within them.

He would have become the internal God and humans would have become His external form with a substantial bodies.

"Do you know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?' I Corinthians 3:16.

If after one has been saved through faith becomes God's temple, then Adam and Eve could have originally become true ancestors of humanity if they had become One with God's words.

We say that God is our Father and we are His children, but we still feel that there is a separation where God is superior and we are inferior in this relationship.

When we view our relationship in this way we would want to stand in God's position and God would say that He cannot allow it.

God does not refuse us. God knows that we wish for such a position in our hearts and thus He encourages us with words and gladly gives up His kingly position for us.

While God enters our hearts and dwells within us as His temples, He wants us to occupy His place.

What does it mean in the Bible reference that we are God's temple?

These words have been interpreted incorrectly.

We come to believe it means that God just rests inside our bodies as we conduct our daily lives watching over us as if we were just common people.

These are great words because no matter how Great a God of glory He is, He still has blessed us with the right to inherit the universe after we have formed a true relationship of love with Him.

Within this relationship, we can whisper words of love to one another and attain oneness with Him.

Through love, we can obtain the right of inheritance to the universe and everything in it. All of the spiritual and physical world is created by Him.

No one has known this amazing truth: Adam was originally suppose to be God's body in physical form.

"Do you know that you are God's temple?" I Corinthians 3:16

Our hearts are where the original love blossoms and would originally become the Holy of holies. Then God would have built a temple of universal love in Adam's heart.

From there, He would expand that power and let the flower of love blossom. This is why God created Adam and Eve and blessed them so they could create a true family that would eventually fill the whole world.

So, what is the most sacred place of all?

Would the temple in Jerusalem be such a place? Something that man has crafted by hand cannot be the most holy place.

God builds the greatest sanctuary, where His love can dwell.

However, we lost this sanctuary.

Thus, humanity's sin, which we have inherited, is mighty. :(

Adam was God's body and Eve is in the position of His wife.

If they had fulfilled their destinies as True Parents and attained oneness with God, their children would have been born directly from God's lineage. It is the Principle that they were to be His kindred.

Where will those rest who have reached the perfection stage once they passed to the spirit world?

Adam would have become God's body. We are designed to be God's temple and dwelling place.

After the fall, how can we resemble Him?

Once we have reached our portion of responsibility, He then dwells in us and all human lives will all come together in oneness through love.

When a man and woman come together in love as husband and wife and form a family, they mutually assimilate and unite in love.

The power of love would allow us to be like God and become truly one with Him.

When humans fully mature into adulthood, both their spirit and their physical body, then the invisible God enters them and makes a love nest there.

God has a climactic love that pleases both Adam and Himself at the same time. Therefore, love is the greatest and most sacred temple.

"Temple" in Korean is "Seong Jeon". Seong is a Chinese character meaning 'sacred'. Therefore, God can be found wherever there is true love.

Why do we like true love as human beings?

Whenever we come across true love, we know that they have met God at the same time, since God is the essence of love.

When Adam and Eve have fully matured and make love, God, the Creator of the universe would enter their bodies and make them into the most sacred temple of all.

We say that we are God's temple and dwells in the heart of man. Adam is God's substantial body. These two fathers can then become one. They attain oneness.

Thus, Adam's original nature is the starting point where the invisible spiritual world and visible physical world come together in unity.

The original nature did not involve bundles of money, or greed.

Our cells are fully mobilized during the times of innocence of adolescence which manifests as an antenna which later settles down once God has come to reside within us.

When you offer God a prayer and ask God where are you when in a meditative state, He will reward you with a wonderful answer.

He will say, "Did you get anything for breakfast? What is all the fuss about?"

God would answer, "Where else would I be? I am in the innermost depth of your heart!"

Where is heaven said to be? It is in your heart.

Return for Tomorrow's Post: Do Not Treat People Lightly This post was rewritten and derived from the textbook, Cheon Seong Gyeong, Book Seven Section 10 and Book Ten, Chapter one, section 3