Seven Principles for Loving Relationships Part I

 

We speak upon having mind and body unity often. Once one is able to center their fallen body upon their godly mind, this principle fosters and furthers the flow of true love.

This is one of the following seven principles.

Why does religion emphasize principles or rules?

Because principles underpin both the natural and human worlds.

A Confucian philosopher, Chu his writes, “There is not a single thing that lacks an inherent principle.”

This is the same observation behind the idea of natural law, that there are invariable principles that govern the nature of everything in existence.

Even though we were endowed with free will and we can choose to live in accordance with these laws or not, the principles of the natural world and human world have many parallels to one another. This is because they both have the same origin, God.

We can also see that these principles reveal much about the Creator to us as well.

Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made

Romans 1.19-20

Reverend Sun Myung Moon gives us insight that the principles or laws for true love not only have counterparts in the created world, but they also tell us much about God.

The following is a summary of all of the principles. They are first briefly defined and then described within the larger universe.

Principles for True Love

1. Maturing Through Responsibility

We each grow to our fullness when we fulfill the responsibility to give out true love. 

Everything in creation automatically reaches maturity without effort except for humans. Our mind reaches its potential only through our exercise of our responsibilities.

God dwells where there is unity of mind and body. 

Due to the Fall, maturity does not maintain or come easily to us. We are disunited between our godly mind and our sinful, flesh or body. Humans do many things that they know they should not do and immediately regret them.

Saint Paul wrote about this state of disunity. He said that there was a war between his 'members' or body and his mind. Those who sought to have unity with their mind, they often had to walk a difficult path of self-denial and sacrifice in order to restore the natural relationship between their mind and body centered on God.

If we observe those who have good moral stature, these are people that the world deems as extraordinary

people who are pure-hearted, passionate for truth and righteousness, and morally advanced.

Such people have overcome selfish desires and attachment to worldly concerns such as lusts, obtaining possessions, influence, or even status in society.

Instead, they follow the dictates of what is good and true and beautiful even at the great sacrifices of themselves and their comfort. Jesus said they have 'overcome the world,” but they have overcome the influences of the world within themselves that are far from God in order to follow Him and the imperatives of true love.

Such people are called saints, sages and the enlightened ones.

We can say they are the incarnations of God's ideal.

When a person does attain unity between their mind and body, there is an affinity with the divine where He influences the person directly and bestows His extraordinary love and power to him or her.

When a person achieves this unity with God, he or she is able to manifest the divine nature out into the world and serve as a clear messenger or reflection of God.

Jesus boldly declared to the people, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” John 14.9

2. Mind and Body Unity

Mind and body unity allows us to give true love. This is where the mind leads the fallen body of the flesh. Everything is composed of external and internal dimensions where the external follow the internal. 

Our body, which leads humanity in the wrong direction, must obey the mind, but when humanity ignored God's will, the sinful body ended up dominating the godly mind.

All animals have natural harmony between their mental and physical aspects. Their inner instinctive impulses direct their body's behavior toward a purposeful action. This is how we come to admire the dignified beauty and elegant efficacy of even the simple house cat. Every single movement embodies grace. Nothing it does betrays its essential God-given feline nature.

Isn't every inch of an oak tree's trunk, branches, roots, leaves, acorn or bark true to its own nature?

We rely on the absolute integrity of the created world as part of our basic security.

The absolute integrity within the creation is a reflection of its Creator.

St. Paul write of God's “eternal power and divine nature” which is expressed and seen through the crated world. Romans 1. 20

The 'divine nature' represents His character while His 'power' represents His manifestation throughout the world. In other words, the divine Word and His deeds are one.

God is the ultimate example of harmony of word and deed, character and expression; the equivalent of mind and body unity. Because God has such a character and we as humans are created in His image, we also can manifest this kind of integrity. When we a person does, we see a authentic human and likeness of divinity.

Such individuals as a government official who speaks out against a tyrant even though he may be killed or persecuted, or the Oxford graduate who sets up his medical practice in a slum are people acting in a way that is true to their deepest heart and conscience.

These are examples of unity of mind and body in service to love.

For Reverend Moon, this mind and body unity is a prerequisite to altruistic loving. Thus it comprises a principle of true love.

3 Giving and Receiving

Through giving and taking, True Love is generated and sustained. When one initiates and invests love continually, then receives well

True love gives completely. It is total giving, to the degree that we ultimately reach a point where there is nothing left to give. After we reach that ‘zero point,’ we will have the capacity to receive much more than we gave. This process of giving and receiving will achieve a balance that continues forever. Relationships of giving and receiving will produce a world where people live for the sake of others centering on true love.

—Sun Myung Moon

Youngsters love to play catch with their fathers, teenagers enjoy talking to each other and young lovers delight in dancing together.

The commonality between all these activities: basic give and take between people. These small gifts comprise our lives.

Give and take is the substance of all relationships.

Conversation is basically just an exchange of words, and marriage is an exchange of concern and support. Through that exchange, the heart is transmitted back and forth.

Giving and receiving is a second universal principle which comprises and sustains true love.

Just like everything else, love depends on give and take, communication, support, working and playing together. The genesis of love depends on it.

Interaction inspires affection.

A patron who exchanges a few words with a bus driver everyday can create such a bond that the commuter misses her when she changes routes. A daughter-in-law can feel surprised at how she misses the cantankerous, complaining mother-in-law she cared for until her death.

We develop a bond when we are given enough dealings with just about anything or anyone. Reverend Moon observed this give and receiving action as a principle of true love.



Return for Tomorrow's Post: Seven Principles for Loving Relationships Part II


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

Seven Principles for Loving Relationships

We speak a lot about the importance of one obtaining mind and body unity.  This principle fosters and furthers true love when it is centered on God.  It is one of seven such principles that underpin both the natural and human worlds.

“There is not a single thing that lacks an inherent principle,” writes the Confucian philosopher Chu Hsi

The Great Learning 5


There are principles and a natural law that govern the nature of each existence.

The principles that govern the natural world and the human world have many parallels to one another.  This is because they both have a single origin, God.  The difference is that humanity has been given free will in order to choose to live in accordance with their own God-given natures or not.

From a different perspective, these principles also reveal much about the Creator to us:

Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.

Romans 1:19-20


The Divine Principle gives insight about how true love has a counterpart in the world which tells us a lot about God's characteristics.  We will first define these principles and the general principle that is active within the larger universe.


Principles for True Love

1. Maturing Through Responsibility

As each person fulfills the responsibility of true love, they grow into the fullness of humanity.

Everything in the universe automatically grows in maturity ... except humans.  A person's reaches the mind's potential when the individual exercises his own portion of responsibility.  This portion or free will has been equated to 5% where God's responsibility is 95%.  Human's portion though greatly smaller than God's, take 100% effort in order to fulfill.

Responsibility is a rudder to steer a person into a life of goodness and morality. 

Character educator Thomas Lickona boiled virtues education down to the two major ones of “Respect” and "Responsibility".

He said that educators had found over and over again that respect and responsibility covered all of the virtues.  Responsibility is the major umbrella virtue and is pivotal to a fulfilled life.  It encompasses the development of most other virtues needed for growth of an individual.

When we look at responsibility from the Principle point-of-view, we see that it is a gift from God.  This allows man to become participants in their own creation instead of being born 'ready made'.  God gave us chose in responsibility for the enhancement of human beings instead of making everything automatic which is found in nature.

Reverend Moon has said that if God intervened too much in humankind’s responsibility, their
"honor and dignity would be nullified".  It would be like a mother or father that held onto did all of their child's homework or never let go of the handlebars as their child learns to ride a bike holding them up instead of learning on their own eventually.

As the common saying goes, “What you are is God’s gift to you. What you become is your gift to God.”

We have a responsibility together with God to create and shape ourselves into the types of people we want and are meant to be.  We will do better with our growth when we take responsibility and participate in creating our own destinies.


2. Mind and Body Unity

The previous two posts give a more focused point on how to obtain Mind and Body Unity.

Mind and body unity—the mind leading the body—permits a person to give true love.

All things are composed of external and internal dimensions, with the external following the internal. In the case of humans, the body is to obey the mind.


3. Giving and Receiving

In the universe, all new forces and things arise from two entities forming a relationship and solidifying it through giving and receiving elements of themselves.

We generate and sustain true love through give and take action.  When we give first, investing continually and receiving, true love can come through.

Interaction is an amazing phenomenon.  When we observe nature entities from the subatomic particle to the solar system from male to female animals to symbiotic plants, we see that they all form a relationship and solidify it through giving and receiving of elements of themselves.

From a large nuclear reaction in the heart of the sun to biochemical reaction in a small living cell, what powers all movement is development and reproduction.

Even the very existence of things depends on give and take; the raging drama of a summer storm would not exist except for the intense give and take between hot and cold, high pressure and low, positively and negatively charged.

“All God’s creations borrow from each other,” reads a Jewish Midrash, “day borrows from night and night from day . . . the sky borrows from the earth, and the earth from the sky”

Exodus Rabbah 31.15

Interrelatedness and interdependence abound.



4. Subject and Object Partnership

When a person respects their role in a relationship and fulfills their responsibility, true love flows.  This is true whether they are initiating or responding, leading or supporting.  Every entity establishes one of these position in the course of every interaction in the universe.

People in the subject mode may provide leadership or impart knowledge; those in the object mode may offer support or receive instruction.  For instance, in the role of a family, the parents are in the subject partner role and the children are in the object partner position.

A physician is subject, patient is object, the quarterback is the subject partner in certain football plays while the teammates are his object partners.  A manager and the rest of the employees are also in a subject-object relationship.

Then what would the ultimate subject and object partnership be?  This would be between the Creator and His creation.  When God initiates in the relationship, His object partner which is humanity is to respond.

This is the import of the Christian declaration, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

John 3.16

 God inspires prophets with His Word; humankind responds by heeding it.



5. Masculine and Feminine Harmony 

All entities in nature exist in a paired structure—male and female or positively
and negatively charged—and each attracts its complementary opposite to form
productive relationships.

The harmony between men and women creates a base for true love to develop and become deeper.  Therefore, men and women need each other for support.

Masculine and feminine trying to find balance in order to unite expresses a principle that runs throughout all of existence.  When these two polarities harmonize and give off a beautiful tension, it fills the universe with energy, structure, life, beauty and joy.

We see this exampled in a white frosty mountain overlooking a green valley, a peacock with colorful long tail feathers on display to attract a peahen who in turn will bear his young.  An electron weighs less than a thousandth of a proton, yet they precisely balance to comprise an atom.

Reverend Moon has said, “Beauty arises from the fusion of extremes into a harmonious oneness".


6. Investing Towards Oneness

There is an innate want for unity between complementary partner which initiates the effort needed to realize true love.  Complementarities like male and female begin as separate beings in the world but are drawn into oneness.

We see these natural uninhibited occurrences arise between polarities in nature, but when we look in the human world of man, we see various conflicts.  In real life, men and women are meant to unite their opposite attributes, but do not easily get along.  At times they may seem to be enemies.

If you were to put a group of men and women together in the same room, you will find that the conversation will lean toward the differences and confusion between men and women and possibly their relationships.

“Women talk too much,” “men are so insensitive,” “females are just a heap of emotions,” “all men think about is sex”—the complaints are predictable.

The history of men and women is fret with misunderstandings, mistrust, abuse and exploitation.  One gender has taken advantage of the other's need and natural dependence and used their gifts to overpower the other for eons.

Men have bullied women with their physical strength, women have controlled men through their sexual allure cause this clash between the sexes. This evil legacy began in the very first family at the beginning of history which has been taught in all the great traditions.

This disunity between men and women is also due to the different "culture" that each gender shares. Tons of books speak about the fact that women and men live, think and communicate differently from the other.

From God's point of view this was not meant for disharmony or for power struggle between the two genders, but for them to unite and naturally arises during the course of each gender's development.


7. Unity Around a Higher Purpose

Unity between people when they focus on a higher purpose creates the basis for true love.  When beings have a shared purpose, this will lead toward unity.  In hierarchies, individual purposes serve the whole.

The most basic of shared projects is the relationship itself.

Family members, teammates and business partners may often wisely make substantial sacrifices for the sake of their alliance, what psychologist Terry Hargrave calls “we-ness.”

The vitality of this “we-ness” depends on how much the participants can favor the interest of the relationship over their own interests, and seek to reach their personal goals and meet their individual needs through the relationship instead of around or in spite of it.

Any good sports team knows this.

“In order to have a winner, the team must have a feeling of unity,” says legendary University of Alabama Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant. “Every player must put the team first—ahead of personal glory.”

Long wed couples know this too and make many sacrifices for the marriage. Lovemaking within a caring marriage is a metaphor for this idea:

Each partner seeks to satisfy the other and ultimately comes to surrender to their union.  Ego can get in the way of this union, but one should recognize that rather than losing anything in this surrender, each self gains deep joy and a meaningful connection.


Return for Tomorrow's Post: Where Does Love Begin

Text rewritten and derived from the textbook: True Love, Chapter Mind and Body Unity