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.

God's Rules for Successful Relationships

When we look at love relationships today, on the whole, there seems to be a lot of confusion, a lot of advice and nonsense that just further the confusion when it comes to the love of a man and a woman.

Wouldn't God make a certain standard for relationships?

Most certainly, God has an absolute standard and order, and model of love He has in mind.

It depends on whether the love a man and a woman share is in accord with God's will that determines success or destruction.

That is a relief to know that God has already placed within the creation a set standard for how a man and a woman should love one another.

Once these certain standards are set in place, not only do they receive God's protection in their love, but they are guaranteed a successful and loving relationship full of happiness.

Many relationship gurus fight amongst themselves over who has the better solution to acquire love and how to keep it, but the highest best advice comes from the master of love Himself, God.

Let's go back to the beginning of the very first love relationship, Adam and Eve.

We by now know the story that if they had become one in love that was based on the love of God, then this world would have turned out completely opposite from what we witness now.

They would have matured and become perfect individually and then they would have become the universal model of love.  This is what God desired from human beings.

Likewise, man and woman must also have wanted to have united based on this true love of God, wouldn't they?

The true love of that couple would be the core of the universe.  That love would have become the standard of measurement for the rest of humanity and for eternity.  God's love and human love is the same in essence.

Love causes oneness. 

Why does a man and a woman long for each other?

They feel such a natural desire because it is the only way man can possess God is through a woman and a woman can possess God only through a man.

In other words, they have a longing for one another because God comes and dwells where a man and a woman have become one in love.

God is the source of man and woman.

Therefore, we should sing praises for the noble value of God and the dignity and value of men and women.  When God's beloved woman lives in a man's heart and God's beloved man lives in a woman's heart as well, these two will become object partners to God.

When they love each other, God will be delighted to see such love and all things will rejoice.

Heaven and earth will rejoice to see such a man and a woman embrace who have such values.  When man and woman embrace each other in mutual fondness, that fondness becomes the point where the universe unifies.

This was how God's original ideal for the world of peace was to unfold.  Originally, a man should meet a woman where he can rejoice, and a woman should meet a man with whom she can rejoice.

More than this, their encounter should be a place where both God and all things in creation can rejoice.

Then, all of creation will be mobilized for this couple.  They want to be ruled by them.  Birds will sing and butterflies will flutter and dance joy at this sight.  God will rejoice, people will rejoice, everything will rejoice.

This would have been the original scene if the first ancestors started history based on such a position. The world would have had a different origin and it would have been centered on God.

The Reason Men and Women Are Born

What is the original purpose of man to be born on earth?  It is undeniable that man was born for the sake of a woman.

Of course many Westerners would shake their head at such a notion, but this fact is undeniable.

Likewise, woman was not born for her own sake.  Even her breasts and sexual organs are not for her, but her children and husband.  We should know that problems arise if a woman fails to understand her own purpose for being born for the sake of man.

Since the 70s of modern feminism and equal rights, women have fallen far away from the traditional view of marriage and life.

No matter how much it is fought, God ultimately established the world based on these principles.

Therefore, we cannot enter the world of goodness, truth, happiness and peace or the world of love and the ideal unless we follow this principle.

A woman is born to meet a man, and a man is born to meet a woman.  Isn't this so?  This is the highest truth whether it is recognized or not.

When we deviate from this highest truth, that constitutes the highest evil.

God created men and women physically opposite and complementary to one another.

Women are one-directional, men are three or four-directional.  Women are more likely to enjoy staying at home while men are more likely to enjoy traveling the world.

There are many books, movies and discussions over the differences between men and women and that it is almost impossible to come together in unity.

How is it possible for men and women to become one?  Surely, a perfect God would not create such beings that would not be able to unite.

Men and women unite through love.  Love has the ability to unite human beings and God.

Man was not born for the sake for academic accomplishments, money or political power.  He is born for the sake of a woman.

Man was born with a larger physique, not so that he can live only for himself, but so he can earn a living for their children and wives.

No one can argue the fact that men and women's sexual organs are different from one another.

Of course these organs do not exist for their own sake.  Man's sexual organ came into existence for the woman, likewise, woman's sexual organ is for the sake of man.

Have you ever stopped to think about this?  This is not a funny matter.

Where is the final destination of love?

Since the coming together of the male and female sexual organ makes them one, this is the final destination.

That which man has is not his, and that which woman has is not hers.  In other words, man has what belongs to woman, and woman has what belongs to man.  The sexual organ becomes a channel through which the mind and body come merged through love.

We should clearly know that we are each born for the sake of our one partner.

This is important, because if we know our final destination, there is no confusion and we know clearly the path we should take in life.

So, why are men and women born on earth?

Men and women are born to love each other.  Since God is the great king of wisdom, He switched ownership of their love organs.

A man is not the owner of his sexual organ.  The same is true for women.

Those who behaved carelessly in regard to the ownership of their love organs will be ultimately judged.

If men were to suffer punishment under the most harshest and fearful of laws, would they even think of other women instead of their wives.  Conversely, can wives think of other men instead of their own husbands?

Men and Women Absolutely Need Each Other

How much do men and women need each other?

Just think, no matter how much men boasts about their accomplishments, it does not matter because it would all disappear in 100 years if there were no women.

Therefore women are absolutely necessary.

When we look at a single man, we think he needs to be with a woman and when we look at a woman, she has to be with a man.

Man can not be born based on his own desire, nor woman be born through her own desire.  Both need each other.

The reason one is born a woman is that there is a man who needs her. Likewise, the reason I am born as a man like this is that there is a woman who needs me.  Isn't that right?  We are all born in this way, with God's knowledge.

Man absolutely needs God, but before this, he needs a partner called woman.

This is where human history has failed miserably.  Men have failed to correctly understand the absolute need for women.  Also, women have not understood they absolutely need for men.

A true man and a true woman who pursue true love are joined through their efforts of becoming one in heart.

When such a man and woman are joined as one, God comes and dwells with them.

God does not like to see a couple that is joined by true love to separate.  Therefore the love of an absolute man and woman is eternal.

God is omnipotent and omniscient, but even God's existence will have no meaning if He is alone.

On the same token, no matter how handsome or fit a man may be, these things have no meaning if he is without a woman.

Men who are in love with their own existence and good looks lead such an ugly existence.

He has no value before God. This is the problem that many men in the world have fallen into such narcissism. This is the reason why history has moved toward tragedy.

God's providence works to change and improve this world that has been immersed in such self-centeredness.


Photos courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net


Return for Tomorrow's Post: Become Part of God's Direct Lineage

This post was rewritten and derived from the textbook, Cheong Seong Gyeong Book Four - True Family, Chapter Five Section 1 - 3

7 days of Holy Sex`Day 3 - Original Moral Code

“The owner of a husband’s sexual organ is his wife, and the owner of a wife’s sexual organ is her husband,” teaches Reverend Moon. "Marriage is finding the rightful master of one’s most holy place of love.”

In the previous post, we spoke about 8 points of the benefits of sex in a marriage.  These are the basics of sexual codes: An individual's sexual expression was meant to be reserved for only his or her spouse.

The only priest or priestess allowed to enter the Holy of Holies in the temple of the body is the married partner.

 The Qur’an concurs: “The believers are . . . those who guard their private parts except with their spouses”

When it comes to conjugal love, partners already have this sense of belonging to their beloved. "You own my heart,” they profess to each other.

In the Song of Solomon, the young woman says, “My beloved is mine and I am his”.

Couples promise their undying commitment, share their fortunes and futures and give all they have and what they will acquire to one another.  The greatest gift of this love is the exclusive affection and trust in an exclusive sexual relationship.  This is why it is natural for a husband and wife to claim their spouse on their beloved's love and his or her sexual expression.

Legal codes have historically recognized this expectation as “conjugal rights.

St. Paul, for example, speaks of this standard when he states, “The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.”

1 Corinthians 7:4


This means that each of us is a caretaker of our reproductive organs, attending them as a treasure for the sake of the true owner our spouse and the Creator.  This sense of entitlement or proprietorship, of course, is necessarily in the spirit of respect and care.

Again, the Bible goes on to say that, “Even so, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.”

Spouses are to love one another even as god loves and sacrifices for each of them.  Each denying themselves  for the other and the duty to satisfy each other sexually is part of the larger promise within a marriage.  The world's major religious traditions for thousands of years have been consistent and of one accord in affirming commitment in a sexual union as the norm.


Religion Teaches Sexual Sacredness

Rev. Sun Myung Moon has used his 93 years of knowledge of the spirit world and different religions to bring about the truth of absolute, pure sex in the following speech:

All religions share the strict prohibition against sex outside of marriage, especially against infidelity within marriage. “You shall not commit adultery,” is among the Ten Commandments recognized recognized by Christians and Jews Exodus 20:14 and affirmed by Muslims Qur’an 6.151-53.

Among the ten precepts recognized by Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism is the charge of chastity.

This uncompromising norm will never change or become outdated. It is everlasting, having originated in the Creator and conforming to the very design and purpose of human creation.

Reverend Moon calls it the absolute sex standard. This is the standard “in the beginning” to which

Jesus was referring when he commented about matters of marriage Matthew 19:8.

The gold standard of sexual morality This norm is indeed latent within people’s consciences and “written on their hearts” Romans 2:15.

Common sense tells us abiding by this simple standard establishes the safety and security necessary for the greatest sexual satisfaction for both partners, and only these conditions will contain all the potential consequences of sexual union for the partners, their families and society.

Those involved with public health policy call it the “gold standard” of sexual morality, because it averts all the myriad negative health, social and other consequences of sexual behavior.



Confronting the Permissive Standard

However self-evident this original standard that links sexuality to marriage might be, reaffirming and reinvigorating this is sorely needed in contemporary times.

The developed nations remain in— and developing countries continue to fall under the thrall of—the sexual revolution that broke down traditional taboos in the 1960s.  Men and women relate in a 'low-commitment culture of ‘sex without strings, relationship without rings'.

Popular sexual morality has evolved since the blatant hedonism and promiscuity of the early days of the sexual revolution, but the basic “free sex” ideology still persists among many people of influence.

This is an outlook that sees sex apart from marriage as an act of liberation against unfair restrictions and that physical involvement is no one’s business except the partners.

Fun is considered justification enough for sexual relations; lovers should expect to be discarded when someone new comes along, and marriage and parenthood are unnecessary constraints on personal freedom.

In the aftermath of rampant unwed pregnancies, divorce, disease and heartbreak, this “free sex” philosophy of sex for pleasure has progressed to what is called the “ethic of intimacy", the belief in sex for love.

Warm feelings are now the acceptable reason for men and women to enter into a physical relationship. “Loveless” or “meaningless” sex is the only kind that might be condemned. Sexual activity itself is still regarded as morally neutral; it is its motivation that determines whether it is good or not.

Such an ethic of intimacy represents a moral advance in the many cases where sexual relations are brutally selfish and exploitative.

Yet it is a far cry from the authentic standard and remains just a variation of the older idea. Mutual consent, tolerance and a loose definition of love and intimacy easily legitimate temporary liaisons based on fickle feelings.

“We were crazy about each other,” recalls one young man. “I thought, ‘This is the one.’ We even discussed marriage. I gave my virginity to her. Well, so much for ‘undying love'. Now I don’t even know where she lives.”

Such an ethic does not protect partners from agreeing to use each other and inflict harm on one another and innocent parties beyond themselves, however this might go undetected at the time.

Whether the old free sex perspective or the newer ethic of intimacy, sexuality is regarded as a domain with its own rules, a unique impulse that cannot and must not be overly controlled. Sex is seen as a need to be addressed like that of food and sleep, and thus vital to mental and physical health. More than this, it is an entitlement, a right that cannot be denied.

In popular culture, sex is the universal gateway to joy, love, wisdom, transcendent experience, personal growth and discovery, worthy of endless participation, depiction and discussion. It has taken on mythic dimensions, like the Holy Grail or fountain of youth, and is almost an object of worship, as mentioned above.

This is a well-worn detour from the truth.

History abounds with examples of societies exalting sex out of all proportion and outside its rightful boundaries. Fertility worship in ancient Israel is a Biblical illustration.

History also testifies to the fact that whenever a society allows this to happen, destruction follows. Anthropologist Carl Zimmerman and others have discovered that the acceptance and practice of adultery and other aspects of sexual license are reliable predictors of the disintegration of a civilization.


Addressing Flawed Premises

The original sexual norm represents the enlightened and responsible standard, because it respects the realities of the heart and conscience as well as the body and harmonizes unselfish love and passion according to the human nature endowed by the Creator. The absolute sex standard confronts the flawed premises of the old “free sex” ethic: Absolute Sex Morality

The primary human motive and need is to give and receive love.

Sexual love is one dimension of this need and, while conjugal companionship and sexual intimacy are both good and healthy conditions, neither is a necessity, especially genital sexual relations. Sexual restraint is expected of any mature person.  Sexuality has intrinsic moral, spiritual, psychological and social dimensions.  Sexual love is a feature solely of the marital relationship.

It is responsible only in the context of this commitment and it is enriching only when accompanied by both love and commitment. Sexual expression is a responsibility and both a personal and public
matter.


“Free Sex” Morality

Sex is the primary human motive and need. As such, regular sexual outlets are a necessity. Too much sexual restraint is unhealthy and destructive.

Sexuality can be simply physical pleasure; it has no necessary moral, spiritual, psychological and social dimensions.  Sexual love can be a feature of any relationship; all sexual behavior is either normal or a variation.

Sex can be enriching free of love and commitment, while mutual consent and the use of birth- and disease control make it responsible. Sexual expression is an entitlement and a wholly personal matter."SMM



Return for Tomorrow's Post: 7 Days of Holy Sex Day 4: Benefits of Waiting for Marriage

This text was rewritten and derived from the Textbook: True Love, Chapter "The Meaning of Sexuality".

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