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Showing posts with label grow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grow. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

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.


Sunday, September 8, 2013

Develop Loving Character On Earth

Your life on earth is only but a short moment in comparison to eternal life in the spirit world.  How important is our life on earth?  You are only given one life.  Earthly life is but a point in time.

During your time on earth, this is the time to prepare for life in the spirit world where you will live after your earthly life. No one is exempt from this principle.

With this idea at the center, you should overcome all difficulties, control and overcome everything.  Otherwise, you will not be able to achieve perfection.  Many people of faith believe that perfection happens once they enter the spirit world, but growth is only obtained through a physical body.

People were created to live eternally.

Life would be simpler if people just ceased to exist at the end of their life.  However, you do not know this for sure because you have not had any spiritual experiences.

Through spiritual experiences, you are able to meet Adam and thousands of your ancestors of thousands of years ago.

You should realize how precious a time it is to live on earth in your physical body.  It is only during this time you are able to grow to perfection and resurrect God from His lowly position.

On earth, you resurrect the universe and unify all of heaven and earth back to the original position at the time of creation.  God and the universe were to be united into one from the beginning, but that relationship was severed through humanity's going the wrong way.

Even the value of God and all of creation cannot be exchanged for the physical world. 

Why? 








Without the existence of a human being with a physical body, perfection cannot be achieved. 









Once you realize that growth is only on earth, you realize how precious the human body is.

The value of our body cannot be exchanged for the universe.  This is why the Bible states, "For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?"

Once you pass to the next world, you are unable to move from the life you lived on earth.










If two-thirds of your life was lived in sin, will you be able to cast off this two-thirds once you pass to the next life?  The unrepented sins lived on earth cannot be thrown away.  It will stay with you.

Perfection is achieved on earth, not in the spirit world.

In order to go to the next level in the other world, you have to take the longer route of suffering through another person you do not know who is living on earth.  This process takes thousands and millions of years.  

Even though humanity has slipped far away from the idea, it is possible to achieve perfection on earth.  How?

Through true love, we can reach the level of God's True Son and Daughter, but not in the spirit world.

Are you absolutely certain that you will be able to wear the shoes in the morning you took off before going to bed last night?

What could be more important in life than settling the issue of eternal life?

People of faith do not understand the law of indemnity.  They are seeking to go to the Kingdom of Heaven without knowing all of the necessary requirements and obligations that must be fulfilled.

If humanity had a glorious beginning and followed God's true way in the beginning, we would not have been banished from Heaven on Earth.  Then when we pass to the next world, we would automatically enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Religion would not have been necessary for we would have united with God from the beginning and would not have to be taught such basic principles.

There has not been anybody who has said that they would go to heaven after taking the responsibility through liquidating all of the historical sins by paying indemnity.

While we have our physical bodies on earth, we should take responsibility and establish condition to resolve everything that has gone wrong in history

If you go to spirit world without paying indemnity for yours and your ancestor's sin which you carry on your body, then you must return to earth to pay this indemnity.

Many people have mistaken this phenomena for reincarnation.

Once you have passed, you do not receive another life through your own earthly body, but you must work through someone of similar circumstances who already lives on earth.

What is one advantage people on earth have over those in the spirit world?  It is the fact that they have a physical body which they can establish a condition to pay for and liquidate their sins.

Every spirit throughout the historical ages had arrived to the spirit world without paying for the past sins and thus they have violated that law.

Therefore, they are destined to return from the spirit world to try again to establish the conditions of indemnity.

There is not a single person who can avoid death.  Death cannot be avoided.

You should clearly determine whether you are the group bound for the Kingdom of Heaven or the group bound for hell.

The way you life your earthly life is a measure of where you will live in spirit world.  What is bound on earth is bound in heaven.

Father knows the spirit world very well.  He knows that it is a place where all sorts of people come, live and go.

Those who lived on the earth only enjoying their time and living just for the sake of themselves will turn around and go to hell.

Those who lived for the sake of others and God will turn around and go to the Kingdom of Heaven.  These two worlds separate at the the time of death - there is no in between.

Hell is a place where one goes, there is no movement or growth and is trapped there.  They cannot get out for eternity.

Nevertheless, many have not realized that their mother, father and relatives are headed to hell.  They just believe that things will work out on their own once they reach spirit world and that is it.

If you were to truly visualize that your parents were going to prison, you would cry your eyes out and try to get them out by doing all kinds of things, right?  This is the natural way of human emotions.

In the same way, if you know that your sons and daughters, parents, relatives and brothers and sisters are connected to your through heavenly affection, and they are on the road to hell which there is no escape, wouldn't you have some kind of reaction?

We should understand how serious an action it is to exploit people.

When you relate to someone, you should not think how you will use them for your profit.

Once a person's original nature has been crushed, it takes from half a year to three years to repair it.  So, your actions are something you should fear.  There is no hell as awful as this hell.

When you see beggars and disabled people in the street you should not speak ill of them.  You should wonder if your spirit is not in the same position as they are.

Why do you get married?

You get married to experience parental love, conjugal love and children's love.  Why are these necessary?









The spirit world is a place that is filled with the atmosphere of love. 













You need to experience the love of a family to help train you for the rhythm of the spirit world.

Those who arrive to spirit world who have not truly experienced the four realms of heart felt through living in a family, will be unable to follow the beat and will suffer there.

Such people are like those without a nose to smell the air of love.

The love relationship between parents and children is vertical, a love relationship between husband and wife is horizontal, and the love relationship among brothers and sisters is spherical. These three relationships are different. 

When you are able to deeply experience these three different ways on earth, you will be able to live without restriction vertically, horizontally and in the circle in spirit world.

For example, those who were unable to get a taste of parental love because their parents died, or they were abandoned, truly miss a very important experience of love.

The same for those who have not experienced a loving conjugal relationship.  They will be very miserable in the spirit world because they lack an important part of life.

Likewise, those who do not have any brothers or sisters are in a lonely position.  They are unable to live a complete life in spirit world since they lack love that spreads in all directions.

Those who enter spirit world that had enough love for their parents, brothers and sister, spouse and children - those who experienced deep love of family life - will be able to enjoy a lot of freedom there.

Since the atmosphere in spirit world is love, they will be able to move in any direction without restriction.

Conversely, those who were unable to experience love, as well as narrow-minded people, will find themselves isolated and alone in spirit world with no freedom whatsoever. 

You should raise and leave respectable children before you pass away.  In the future, they will be the people of the heavenly kingdom.

Your path of faith while here on earth may be difficult, but when you think about how many people you have offered themselves as people of the heavenly kingdom, you see that it became a noble path of glory in the world of eternity.

Life of faith is not valued currently on earth and you suffer in a lowly position, but when you go to the spirit world, you find that the accomplishments of great people who have gone to spirit world are considered as valuable accomplishments on earth.

Exactly what kind of place is earth?









Earth a factory to produce the people of the heavenly kingdom. 









Do you understand?

Heaven is infinite, immense and unchanging.  Heaven is so large that we cannot find it.  People have been coming and going for hundreds of millions of years.

Even if a person produced a hundred children, there is no way to overproduce since heaven is so large.  Heaven can accommodate everyone.

The main question you are asked in spirit world is how many people of the heavenly kingdom are you bringing with you.

When you bring many true sons and daughter of the heavenly kingdom, this determines your rank and they are to your advantage toward earning you honor in the heavenly world.

Your ownership is determined by how many people you bring to the heavenly kingdom.  These are your eternal possession.

Once you reach spirit world, there is no multiplication of children.  There is only one meeting point with God standing in the position of vertical Parent and the axis.

If you were to make a serious mistake, you will be confined in the spirit world.  To get out of that place, you would have to wait thousands of years making a lot of effort to move to the next level.

You go to the place which is appropriate for your level and stay there for a long time.

If you have been blessed by God and thus make a serious mistake binding your children, they would accuse you and wonder why you dragged them to hell.

You ancestors will also accuse and wonder if you could have done better with your life on earth.  You will have to stay in that position of accusation as long as they have a condition.

This is not an easy path.  This is why you should determine to do well while you are on earth.

First you were born from your parents.  Next, you were born from God by borrowing your mother's womb.  This is fundamental.  Then you are to find the True Parents, restored, unfallen Adam and Eve, as your own physical parents.

Your physical parents are parents of passage.

Then death becomes a time of joy when you go to meet the True Parents.  True love of the True Parents is in spirit world.  That place would be called the heavenly kingdom.  The common element of that place is love and is filled with parental love.

That love is not just for our own sake.  It is a love through which you are able to abide by the law under the principle of sacrifice and service.

To pass this course, you need to love the universe and love humankind.

Your earthly life is a training ground for such love.  This is the basic core of the universe.

If you are able to practice love with such an outlook, pass the test with honors and then go to the spirit world, you are sure to return to God.  This is the conclusion.

You will surely receive a payment for the life of faith when you go to spirit world.

For those blessed by the Messiah, the doors to the heavenly kingdom will fly open.  While you ride the rail of heart, you need to be pulled toward the heavenly spirit world.

That world is the world of love, thus you can enter it only when your heart harmonizes with it.

Are you destined to go through many stages of judgement when such a world is revealed?

You are born on earth in order to bear the fruit of love while on earth which God desires.

This is why our life is short.  It is one season.  It is not the final destination.

Do not assume that you will live until you are 100 years old.

Even if you are able to live to seventy years, if you worked three times harder on your path of faith, you will have lived the equivalent of 210 years.

Think in this way.  If you work ten times harder, you will have lived for 700 years.

If you work 20 times hard you will live 1,400 years.

Therefore, work 24 hours a day, constantly throughout your whole life for the sake of God's dispensation to restore the world to peace.  While living for others, you bear fruit in the spirit world and possess a large reservoir of love.

You will have a great wealth of love.

You will have many assets of love.  Your stage of operation will be broad.

Fish cannot live outside of water because water is essential for life.  The fish that lives in the river will not just live there forever, it must go back and forth to the sea as well.

Why?  Because fresh water fish cannot produce young without getting a taste of the seawater.  They have to experience both.  Also, fish in the sea have to go to the fresh water and taste it to be able to produce their young. They must go through the two worlds.

Likewise, the earth and the spirit world were not created to be separate worlds.  They only separated after the fall of man severing the relationship between God and man and spirit world and on earth.

You need to acquire the qualities that enable you to live in the two worlds while you are living on earth.



Return for Tomorrow's Post: The Atmosphere in Spirit World is Love

True Love Cheon Seong Gyeong Book Three Chapter 5 Section 2

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Restoring Fallen History


"If you know the will of God more and more, you realize your physical body is being made dirty through Satan and you feel like burning that which has the filthy blood of Satan flowing through it. 
You feel like throwing away your hands and feet and your whole body, which is used by Satan. If you think you want to preserve yourself as you are, stained by Satan, you are being stupid. 

Have you ever had that experience? Since we cannot remain dead, we need the conditions to eliminate our past relating with Satan."

Reverend Sun Myung Moon



Fallen people were not born from God-centered parents in the direct blood lineage of God. Therefore, our birth must be denied, and we must make a new relationship with God.  In other words, because we were born from the fallen dead world, in order to return to life centering on God, we must be resurrected. We need to be born again. But being born is not the conclusion; we then must go through the growth period.

In order to pass through that, the indemnity condition(pay for a wrong done) must be established. You can think of it in a way as 'the sins of the father are visited upon the children'.

For instance, the Principle teaches us that when a wrong is done to someone and they cannot forgive, when they die, they may visit that person in spirit or their descendants and take revenge from the spirit world.  This can be caused through diseases or broken marriages.  Indemnity is when someone makes a condition whether equal or greater to pay back the mistake of the original ancestor.

The greatest indemnity paid in history was through Jesus Christ suffering and shedding his pure blood to pay for our fallen blood. In making the indemnity condition, not only the individual's responsibility but also the national mission and world mission together are included. You must know that what you did concerning this responsibility determines what happens with your Blessing.

Father Moon has taught the true way to make an indemnity condition or pay back what has been wronged in history.  For instance, if there had been a person that could have thinking more on the worldwide level and indemnified Japan's history, the world could have been unified through Japan.


The Bible states:

What good is it if you gain the whole world and lose your very soul?

Life is this precious.

We must know the true method for an indemnity condition, which results in your own precious life.  This is the way for salvation - through paying indemnity.   Indemnity means you climb through the path by which the fall of humanity happened. Then go the opposite way.

Father Moon, the messiah of the Second Coming, has established all of the historical indemnity conditions and won victory.  Now, it should not be a problem when satan attacks good people as he has been throughout all of history until now.  We must be determined to stand fast against these attacks with the methods like Stalin liquidating religious people, we should use satan's attacks against him.


Perfection does not happen automatically but is established through indemnity.



Indemnity was not needed in the original ideal of creation.  Adam and Eve were born in the most perfect conditions for growth toward God as the center.  Indemnity was only necessary after their mistake.

Were Adam and Eve ever perfected?

We know that Adam and Eve were not born perfect for one simple reason: they fell away from God.  If Adam and Eve were born perfect yet were still able to make a grave mistake such as linking to Satan's ideals instead of God's ideal, then the whole ideal of God's creation and perfection would not in itself be perfect.

You and I were not born into ideal situations or conditions, but born through a fallen blood lineage linked to satan.  Therefore, you and I cannot be perfected without making an indemnity conditions first.  This is how we obtain self-perfection.  Those who did not go over the hills of indemnity and reversing the fall within ourselves absolutely have no way to be perfected.

Religious practices before the Second Coming make a condition to link us to God through the Messiah and to be saved spiritually, but this is not perfection and our blood line is still linked to Satan.

When we pay indemnity in order to perfect back to our original sinless selves to God's side, we can call this restoration.  Therefore, we can never separate these two words: indemnity and restoration.

Centering on perfection, reach perfection through the course of restoration through indemnity. After indemnity, then restoration. After being restored, then go the way of perfection. Therefore, you can think of indemnity and restoration as one.



The Indemnity Condition Has to Be Established By Myself


This is Rev. Moon's explanation of why humanity must go the way indemnity:

"What result came about due to the human fall? God and the angelic world were chased out of the human world, and we lost the world of all things. Next, the individual base, family base, clan, tribe, nation and world foundations were all lost.

The word "lost" means that Adam and Eve themselves chased them out. Who has the responsibility for that? That responsibility isn't God's, it is not the angelic world's nor the creation's; it is the human responsibility.

This result was the human responsibility. Therefore, human beings must take the responsibility and assume the destiny to go the course of restoration. However, the course of restoration cannot be traversed by oneself.  Absolutely, you must go through the re-creational principle with the help of the spirit world.

It cannot be otherwise, because it is the principle of salvation that God and the spirit world mobilize for recreation. Before God created human beings, He created the angelic world. With the help of the angels, He created all things and through all things as material, He created human beings.

Because the fall was committed by human beings, restoration through indemnity must be done by human beings.



The Principle is that the one who committed the sin should indemnify it. 



Since the parents became fallen parents, unless the True Parents come and indemnify this humanity cannot go back to God. The one who can solve these things is the True Parent. The value of the True Parents is not comparable to ten million dollars or even billions of lives.

That is why, when you've found the True Parents, you should be able to say, "I'll follow with my life." Jesus said, "Those who want to live will die and those who want to die will live," because that describes the way, the beginning point of restoration through indemnity.

Indemnity conditions must be established by your own self. Another person cannot substitute for you. The fall means the loss of the authority of subjectivity. In restoration, no matter who interferes, you must be confident of yourself and go with the clear subjectivity.

No matter where others are going, I must be busy going my way. At night, there is no time to sleep, there is no time to find a place to sit comfortably and eat a meal. Without having a heart this serious, you cannot go the way of restoration." SMM



To Eliminate The Satanic Sovereignty


If you want to find complete salvation, you must liquidate your own sin and your past. Now through your activities you must clean up the sins you've committed. In order to eliminate sin, you must not do things against the Principle.

Christianity teaches that Jesus has paid the highest price for our sins.  This is correct, but where we make a mistake is believing that just by believing in the blood that all our mistakes are cleared.  Our past is forgiven as a condition to link us to God through Jesus, yet we still bore children of sin.  The work of restoring our fallen blood lineage is ultimately up to us.  If it was easy to clean sin 100%, God would have liquidated sin from the beginning when Adam and Eve followed satan's will.


What is Sin? 

It is when you allow a condition for Satan to invade and attack.  We must clearly know the root of sin.  Evil is Satan himself and Eve set a condition for him to attack with the beginning thought, "Let me be the subject, let me be the center".

We liquidate evil when we reverse the fall and go in the opposite direction toward God's original principle of creation which thinks "Live for the other (spouse)".  "Live for only myself" is satanic human and fallen nature. In order to avoid falling into this self-centered thinking, we must clearly know the origin of good and evil.  God and Jesus want to break this evil thinking down.  This is why Jesus' basic teaching was to not be arrogant, live for others and serve others.

This is God's way of thinking.

Humanity fell away due to the fall based on thinking of oneself without God as the center.  In order to go back toward the original Principle way of life before the fall and become one with the principle of creation, we must go through the course of re-creation.

The fall occurred between Adam and Eve when one was motivated by thinking the other person exists to invest in me instead of thinking I exist to invest in others.  In order to invests, we must do away with ego and do the opposite of the fallen world.  This is why religion teaches to sacrifice yourself for others.

After the fall of Adam and Eve, what kind of illness did the human race contract?


Centering on Satan, we got the sickness of love, and through the sickness of love, the blood lineage of Satan has multiplied. 



In other words, the illness is received from Satan's blood and is born in Satan's direct children. But how did that love sickness start?

When God's order and the heavenly principle was denied when one centered their actions on their own thinking, the sickness of the fall was born.  Therefore, in order to heal this love sickness that has infested across the world, we must deny ourselves and live absolutely centering on God.

If Lucifer, Adam and Eve had centered their whole life centered on God, there is no way they would have gone in their own direction away from God. and they would have established the ideal world.  This would be Heaven on Earth - a place where everyone's life attends and makes a direct relationship of love through God.  God has been striving throughout history to straighten out this mistake.  When you or I are proud about our fallen, sinful self we cannot hope to change toward God's direction.

When we are faced with difficulty while we walk the way of restoration we may think, "This is too hard and I cannot do this".  This is not heavenly God-centered thinking, this is thinking centered on one self.  In order to get away from this self-centered thinking we must have a God-centered sovereignty.  When we walk this path with a complaining heart or deny the work of God's will then our work becomes unqualified.  One who walks the path complaining will eventually give up and claim the work he does for God as his own doing.

Walking the way of faith is difficult so we must think:

God is in front of me, my friends are beside me and my brothers and sisters are there.  We must also think that the fate of humankind's future remains in front of us.

To continue going through the toughest of times in our life of faith, we must think that "I would give up my life to keep going". Isn't this the kind of thinking which all the saints had in history?

When we have this kind of thinking, our self-centered thinking will fall away.  When we go the opposite of me-centered thinking, we can overcome the fallen sovereignty.  We must remember that the most difficult times mean we are kicking out the most difficult fallen sovereignty and getting closer to the day of liberation!


Determine to Go the Opposite Direction of the Fall

Originally, the fall brought us into a place of death. In order to salvage this, you must run into the place of death. No matter what, we all have to go through that fate, so you must do it with a joyful heart as a real man and woman.

Like that, make the determination; the members will increase as they go according to the will of God, and the world will go in a new direction. Our heart must be burning to establish that mother-baby desperation. In your heart, do you have the faith to go beyond the limit of life and death?

We must make the determination with a burning in our hearts and desperation a mother has for her baby to go beyond the limits of life and death.  In order to bring the teachings of the Divine Principle, the Completed Testament to the earth, Father Moon had to fight dozens, hundreds, many tens of thousands of life and death situations.  Even though these situations come like waves, he has never wavered from his goal.

"Even if my legs are broken or my eyes are popped out or my neck is being cut, I do not change from the beginning point of determination. Therefore, I'm victorious as long as I'm alive."


How do we get out of this love of the fallen, satanic sovereignty that plagues the world and this fallen blood lineage?

We must remember, that whenever we think about only ourselves and love ourselves only, satan can take us away.  When we do the opposite and deny myself and think centered on God, by living this way, satan cannot follow or manage me and thus God abides in me and manages me.  When we go in this direction, we can be liberated from the archangel in the satanic world.

When we speak about restoring the world we must see that it will not be accomplished all at once but stage by stage.  Many people of faith are waiting for Jesus to return to destroy this fallen world and take away only the people of faith to live eternally with him in the clouds.

This is thinking not following the ideal of the principle of creation, it also means that satan has won and God is an imperfect God whose principle was so defeated that He destroyed his own creation.

This will not happen.

Adam was the center of the whole.  Because he fell from the individual position representing all of humanity, he must restore the world.

Once the individual position is restored then the family environment, and clan, tribe, nation and world and the cosmic environments must be restored.  Every human must pass through these eight stages.  Once we solve these problems, then and only then will we create the ideal world and freely meet with God who is the subject of love.


One who desires the absolutely unique subject must fulfill the condition by denying the fallen reality. 



Therefore, restoration through indemnity cannot be established even if a small condition of affirmation remains.

We find God when we return to the original position before the fall.  We all have the responsibility to return back to the sinless Adam and Eve's position.

Adam and Eve were to become True Parents who had no trace of sin.  Here we make the true family, true clan, true nation and true world.  To reach this level we must go in the opposite direction of fallen love.  We as fallen people are walking the way of indemnity.  Without overcoming this course we cannot clean out our fallen self.

How can we restore from the individual problem to the family, clan, nation and world? We must have a clear God-centered ideology.


Return for Tomorrow's Post: Three Stages of Judgement

This post was rewritten and taken from the textbook Blessing and Ideal Family section "The Indemnity Condition to Receive the Blessing"

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Ways to Grow the Heart

How the Heart Grows


"It has been said above that the heart is like a garden, requiring cultivation. Cultivating the heart opens a person to God and His influence. The metaphor of the Garden of Eden comes to mind."

We may have heard of the Utopian type of society or a paradise.  When people yearn for a return to Eden, or a lost paradise, we may say that they are yearning for a return to a state of heart.  Eden is described to be a place of heart, of purity and wonder where God dwells with humankind in oneness and love.  This is the place all humans will dwell with one another in peace and joy, this is humanity's and God's wish for the future.  How do we go about accessing this type of realm of heart within and begin to live in the garden of heart with God?


Each body part was designed specifically by God with a purpose.  The heart was designed to grow naturally through the living for the sake of the other or other-centeredness, through experiencing love in the family.  In order to cultivate the heart and love, family relationships are paramount. 

Within family life, people will experience four "realms of heart"" as children, as brothers and sisters or friends, as a spouse and as a parent.  These provide the natural environment and challenges for the heart to grow.
In the beginning, God's ideal was after His first children individually grew into maturity and become perfect, that they would become one through a direct blessing of God through holy matrimony and they would become absolute parents having God's same heart and qualities. 

Yet, we know somewhere this did not happen and the family became distorted burying the heart under layers of self-concern or self-interest.   Through the fall of Adam and Eve, man lost three kinds of love: True parental love, true marital love and true love of Children. 

Also, through the fall we were deprived of ideal families.  Man was degraded from the original quality that was God's expectation.
 
Religion is literally a “re-binding” of the severed ties with God, and its practices are to restore the love relationships that should occur naturally through and in families centered upon God.

Let it be said that the family is such an indestructible vessel of love that social scientists have thrown  up their hands trying to find replacements for an institution that seems now almost inherently dysfunctional.
 
The power of the family to raise viable human beings has been diminished but not destroyed by the effects of the fall. The place where people learn the most about love in life - the place where their hearts’ urges are most nurtured and well-satisfied is still and will always be the family.

Is an orphan raised in an orphanage able to practice the three types of love the same way as a child born into a home where both parents and siblings reside?

God remains deeply sewn into the fabric of the family. Flawed as it may be by the distortion and misdirection of love, the family remains God’s indispensable instrument for schooling people in what it means to be human—what it means to live according to the loving dictates of the heart.

If this is true, then we can see why anyone who wants to destroy God's ideal would first attack the foundation of the family through the three great realms of heart through separation of parents and children.

Besides the family, there are other means of accessing and cultivating the heart. We will cover a few of the major ones: Prayer and faith, loving others, following good mentors, service and suffering.








Ways to Cultivate the Heart









1. Prayer

2. Faith

3. Loving others

4. Loving family environment

5. Service

6. Suffering




1. Prayer






Prayer is a direct encounter with the greatest Heart of all, that of the Creator. The abstract “He and I” becomes an intimate “You and I” experience. Prayer is like pure oxygen for the heart. The source of the impulse to relatedness, God can renew our stores of care and concern that others need and deserve from us.


Meeting with Him enlarges and refreshes our perspective towards other people and the meaning of the tasks awaiting us. It clears the surroundings of the heart to bring others more clearly into focus. Receiving God’s guidance, inspiration, or admonishment strengthens and enlarges what is original and true, while that which is false and petty melts away.




If we imagine the inner heart as being a muscle like its physical counterpart, then the divine encounter in prayer is as if God’s great Heart enters one’s own and forces the walls to expand outward.

Our vision, scope of concern, and capacity for caring expand. When prayer ends, the heart tends to revert to its prior state, but it is never quite as small. Like a muscle, it is now a bit larger, stronger, more pliant and more readily stretched to contain God’s love in the future. If prayer is frequent and accompanied by action, this effect occurs over and over until it becomes big enough for the divine
Heart to become a permanent resident.

Of the many kinds of prayer, the most valuable from the standpoint of heart development is that which focuses on the needs of others, for this is the prayer of true love. “He who prays for his fellowman, while he himself has the same need, will be answered first,” states the Talmud (Baba Kamma 92a).


 Another valuable prayer is one of offering something back to God. Thus, many religions emphasize praising God in prayer. The prayer of gratitude for a beautiful sunset, a rain-washed morning with an upcoming sun, children’s laughter, birdsong—such a prayer goes like an arrow into the heart of God and brings forth an almost electric response.




Reverend Moon has counseled that the way to feel closer to God is to practice offering thanks for all circumstances. There are many kinds of other worthy offerings in prayer. Seeking to please and comfort the Creator—the way an elder child seeks to comfort a weary parent—may be particularly precious. “Let me help you with your burden, your cross”—what could be more touching for a parent to hear? About his ordeal in a North Korean prison camp, a punishment for preaching about God in a




Communist regime, Reverend Moon relates:I never complained [in prayer]. I was never angry at my situation.  I never even asked His help, but was always busy comforting Him and telling Him not to worry about me.  The Father . . . already knew my suffering. How could I tell

Him about my suffering and cause His heart to grieve still more? I could only tell Him that I would never be defeated by my suffering.





2. Faith

 




It is faith that supplies much of the courage that allows us to “take heart” and continue trying, giving, and loving. Without faith, we “lose heart”; the heart closes down and hides itself. Faith represents belief in what is not yet apparent. In the words of St. Paul, faith is “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11.1). It is seeing the sun behind the impenetrable clouds and hearing the sweet birdsong of spring beyond the howling winds of winter. It means trusting in one’s own and others’ potential for goodness, the capacity to change for the better, and to grow in goodness.

It entails confidence in heaven’s support and protection for worthy endeavors against all practical odds. It involves belief in the power of true love, just as such love “always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” (1 Corinthians 13.7).

The practice of faith fortifies the heart’s ability to lead with its unique sensibilities. This means practicing trust in one’s intuition taking a measure of risk to pursue an inner prompting. Sometimes it entails believing in people when there are good reasons not to.

Blaise Pascal said, “The heart has reasons that reason knows not of.”


Taking the risk toward loving others in the faith that they, like oneself, have a heart that yearns for connection is almost always affirmed by the response of the other.

 




3. Loving Others





A most basic mode of cultivating the heart is to have warm relationships with a wide range of people. This is commonplace in traditional cultures, where extended family and village life bring the individual into constant contact with all age ranges and personalities. Between siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles and grandparents, every age from infant to the very elderly is represented, and there is little opportunity to restrict oneself only to peers. Because one also cannot readily escape those with challenging personalities, people learn how to get along and through time may learn to appreciate the value of types of people they don’t have a natural affinity for.

Expanding one’s parameters of love is always a heart-growing experience. Approaching neighbors for a conversation is sometimes a real challenge to the heart. It has been said in modern times, “we can put a man on the moon but can’t walk across the street to greet a neighbor.” Talking one-on-one with respect and ease to a person from another race, another culture, another background, is an exercise in heart-stretching.

Sometimes the institution of marriage is a place where a person is called upon to love in places and ways he or she never thought possible before. Often, people find day-to-day life with another person to be very different from what they imagined when they first wed. Learning to love someone of the opposite sex, who is very different in physical, emotional, and mental make-up, is a heart stretching opportunity. As mentioned earlier, all the relationships in the family are opportunities to gain new ground in different “realms of the heart” (See Chapters 14-18).

The greatest expansion of the heart is to love someone who has acted like an enemy. Indeed, sometimes people we initially dislike and have conflict with wind up being our best friends as the excitement of the heart’s expansion overwhelms us.

One woman had such an experience with a neighbor:
 




Her children had been rude to my children numerous times when we were new in the neighborhood, and she herself was unfriendly. For a long time, we never waved to one another or greeted one another. Finally, I decided to love her in spite of it all. When I raised my leaden arm to greet her, it was hard, but when she smiled back, it was like electricity. I got a jolt of joy far exceeding anything I felt when I greeted my other neighbors. All I wanted to do was greet her again and again and again. I loved her!

 




4. Loving Family Environment

 




Hearts are also cultivated through imitating noble examples. Parents, teachers and other elders and superiors play the most meaningful roles in this.


 Adolescents for example look to their parents and grandparents for values far more than to pop stars,

 politicians, sports figures or religious leaders.



 

The teaching and example of parents and other authorities are a potent force shaping conscience (see Chapter 5), but their influence is of a slightly different kind regarding the heart.

Research points to the fact that young people pick up the moral feelings of their parents more than their words. For example, when young Jessica heard her father talk about respecting the national flag



5. Service





Service is a powerful instrument for conditioning the heart. Religion has prescribed it as a vehicle for spiritual growth for the millennial, and it is being newly discovered in schools as character building. Its impact has several dimensions. It fosters empathy, through contact with another who is in need and experiencing a common humanity.

It cultivates a sense of personal value and meaning. Some experience themselves tangibly as instruments of divine love and assistance in the lives of the ones being helped. It counteracts false pride, when in the course of service a person finds herself doing what she had considered menial or lowly work. It also has a magical power to bring participants into oneness of heart, as they see each other being used for goodness in this way.

Those serving perceive how others may suffer more than themselves and this engenders gratitude. They notice how others suffer apparently unfairly, and this provokes a healthy soul-searching to make meaning of this and decide how to respond to this larger issue. They witness how some may bear their sufferings nobly, and this brings admiration and humility. It is a rare person engaged in service who does not affirm the statement, “I received more than I gave.” What one receives is a life-giving, heart-stretching experience.






6. Suffering






Suffering is another way to develop the heart. Everyone experiences suffering in life. What people do with their suffering determines how it affects their hearts. Suffering can either embitter a person, making him or her resentful and angry for years on end, or it can refine the character into one of shining beauty, revealing and strengthening the heart.  Suffering can be a great teacher—perhaps the greatest teacher—but only if the person is able to make meaning out of suffering.

The twentieth century witnessed a crisis of meaning that shook the world to its foundations. One of Reverend Moon’s greatest


contributions and greatest strengths is that of a meaning-maker. Born during a famine, undergoing Japanese occupation of his country and being arrested and tortured as a resistance fighter, he then experienced a communist takeover of his native land and was imprisoned and tortured by the communists for talking about God in public.



The Korean War claimed most of his relatives, and he fled South as a refugee, only to be so poor as to have to live in a house made out of U.S. army ration boxes. “As I look back,” he said, “I am reminded that my life has never been easy. My life has been intertwined with the suffering history of our people and the numerous difficulties that our people have undergone in the midst of the great powers.”


Yet he found meaning in all this suffering. Korea, he felt, had a special message about God’s suffering heart to give to the world. If his and his country’s suffering could be offered to God, it could pay the price for a rebirth of religion.






The great religious leaders all suffered, and their hearts were anointed by God because of their sufferings. Making meaning out of suffering—offering it to God and using it to identify with His sorrows and the sorrows of humanity—plunges through the layers of distortion and selfishness encasing the heart and brings forth its fountains of true love.

These are but a few examples of how the heart grows. Growing the garden of the heart may require a lifetime of investment, but no goal could be more worthwhile. Growing the heart enables a person to practice true love, which is the fulcrum of a fulfilling life. Because of its centrality to human existence, educating the heart in true love should be a prime concern.

However, trying to develop the heart without the guidance of the conscience may easily lead down the road of following the emotions rather than the heart. The heart needs the conscience and also the will—the taking of responsibility through action—to pump life into its growth. While the heart is ascendant, it cannot be developed properly without the aids of the conscience and the will.


Return For Tommorrow's Post: How Your Heart Can Mirror the Creator's Part 1


From the Textbook: Foundations of Character Education