Children Need God, Too

Growth in the Child’s Sphere

God created the family as a school of love to naturally influence people to be other-centered and pull them away from their self-centerdness.

Each person is required to give up more and more the love of just self and give more to others in order to experience fulfillment.

The family school of love works step by step naturally to pull people out of self-centeredness into other-centeredness. This process begins in the child's realm.

A child learns to obey and control impulses, including the aggressive ones, out of love for their parents and a strong desire for their approval.

The child learns to take care of things, clean up, prevent messes, do their homework, and respect others and property.

As Fraiberg writes, “There are obligations in love even for little children. Love is a given, but it also

earned. At every step of the way in development, a child is obliged to give up territories of his self-love in order to earn parental love and approval.”

To relate well with his or her parents, children need to relate well and kindly to siblings and playmates.

A child learns that his good relationship with his parents depends in part how well he or she treats his or her brothers or sisters, classmates, and friends.

As they grow, the 'horizontal' relationship to their parents takes on a life and significance of its own, even though they are never fully separated in a relationship from them.

Adolescent Children

As children try to define their identities and emotional boundaries as they grow to adolescence, the relationship to please their parents may become stormy and difficult.

Influences outside the family hold sway as adolescence forge relationships to the larger society and world.

As their family's moorings loosen, children may become emotionally tossed around, and experience great highs and lows.

It is important for parents to continue to nourish and assert this main bond of parent/child and the values it represents and recognize the growing importance of their peers and their child's independent identities.

Parents should do this to the sacrifice of their child's peer's influence and some of their child's decision-making power. In order for them to continue to growing in the child's realm of heart this is necessary.

“Our son was succeeding academically and socially in public school,” recounts Mona, a mother of three. “It was the social success that worried us! He’s sweet and smart and a good athlete, and girls called him, asked him for dates, and to go steady with them.

“Our son knew our standard on early dating, and he tried hard to withstand the peer pressure, but it was definitely confusing for him during this vulnerable time of his life.

“When we told him we were enrolling him in a religious school where students’ families and the faculty shared our values, he was upset at first. But soon he underwent a transformation.

“He became more and more responsible and, in this supportive environment, his faith grew and grew. I thank God, for many reasons, that we as parents made that tough decision.”

One pastor, Dave, is in favor of parents taking a strong stand when their children may not be going in the right direction. “Taking a kid out of school and finding him a new one, grounding him or doing whatever else you need to do to pull him up short—that might look like shutting him down,” he says.

“But in fact, it’s giving him the possibility of a whole new life. In almost every case I’ve seen where the parents took a strong stand, it worked.”

Dave also commented that children will sense their parents deep love for them with such actions and respond with gratitude.

This is an illustration of the two points of the child's realm of heart shown during adolescence: First, it demonstrates that the relationship with parents is the primary one superseding. 

Also, directing relationships with peers and this vertical relationship with parents and their parents' values are crucially important to their growth.

Second, it shows that adolescence is a time when the young people mind questions everything and needs to be directed toward God.

When we look at adolescence from a spiritual point of view, there is more than the child forming a separate identity from one's parents in psychological terms. It involves expanding the sphere of children's love to include the ultimate Parent, God.

The fulfillment of the child’s realm of heart is to relate to God with filial piety.

This truly means to respond to God with love, faith and obedience like that of a loving, trusting, responsible child.

“We never know the love of the parent 'till we become parents ourselves.”

Henry Ward Beecher made this observation which highlights how filial love of a child evolves through growing and facing the responsibilities that come with being an adult.

A new understanding and sympathy for parent's roles come as sons and daughters become a spouse, a parent, the breadwinner, a middle-aged caretaker of others and a responsible community member.

As sons and daughters rise to the more advanced realms of heart, spousal and parental realms, they grow to appreciate those who had these responsibilities before which they now face.

When children expand to a higher level of heart, they will appreciate through understand and service to their parents.

The long accumulation of a child’s debt to his or her parents begins to be repaid with gratitude.

There may be the time when the child grows up and becomes his or her own parents caretaker.

Some parents become a child again and lean heavily on their sons and daughter's strength. At these times, they assume the parental role toward his or her own parents. 

 Changing their diapers, paying old debts, settling the family estate and becoming the patriarch or matriarch of the family while urging their parents to take a rest.

When parents become elderly, the child's world/realm of heart comes full circle.

As one woman said: 

"As a young Catholic I was inspired by the saints. I had always wanted to do things like work with Mother Teresa in India, but most of my life has not been so glamorous. After college I became a teacher in an elementary school. 

"And then my mother had a stroke and I had to drop out of teaching and help her for two years; bathe her, care for her bedsores, cook, pay the bills, run the house. At times I wanted to complete these responsibilities and get back to my spiritual life. Then one morning it dawned on me—I  was doing the work of Mother Teresa, and I was doing it in my own home.

A child's love which is mature may involve taking up tasks to fulfill their parent's unrealized dreams.

Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowsky, who created the portraits on Mt. Rushmore, accepted a commission in 1947 offered by Lakota chief Standing Bear to carve a massive tribute to the great Native American chief Crazy Horse out of a mountain in South Dakota.

Knowing how much the project meant to the Native Americans who had had their sacred Black Hills violated by the Mt. Rushmore project, he determined not only to do a bust, but to do a full figure of a man on horseback.

This bust was going to be ten times larger than his Mt. Rushmore project. He dedicated decades to the project, but left it unfinished after he died in 1982.

His children comforted him before his death and committed to bring his dream project to completion.

This is an example of children's love by becoming a person who makes his or her parents proud.

Confucius said, “True filial piety consists in successfully carrying out the unfinished work of our forefathers and transmitting their achievements to posterity.”

This was echoed by Thomas Macaulay, Western poet, when he wrote:

“And how can man die better than facing fearful odds for the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods?”

The person the child becomes as an adult is a gift laid at the altar of his or her parents’ love.

A child's mature heart is reflected in his or her relationship with God.

“There is a common saying, 'What you are is a gift from God. What you become is your gift to Him.”

When we return appreciation and devotion to God for all He has done for us throughout our life and history this reflects His nature. 

 It also makes His dreams, concerns and tasks our own which are hallmarks of filial piety and a true child's heart toward our ultimate Parent.

Return for Tomorrow's Post:

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 on family and love.

Children Represent Their Parents' Love

Children are the incarnation of their parents' love.

Reverend Sun Myung Moon



Children are the substantial evidence of their parents' union of love.

A baby seems to have the reflection of God.  The more you see one's baby, the more mysterious the baby seems.  Mysterious.  This is love.

Parents miss their parents because parents are the home of love.  Parents miss their children because they are the home of perfect love.

All of creation of things, we see in the plant and animal world are composed of relative relationships.  They are made of both male and female elements that look different.

There are male and female aspects in all trees, and in each and every flower.
The relative relationship of male and female exists in the world of mammals, birds, animals and in human beings.

Why does such a relative relationship exist?

This is so they can receive and give true love.  We need a partner because in order for harmony, principles, give-and-take action etc and all of creation to survive and exist, a relative relationship should take place.  No one throughout history has thought of this simple fact.
A seed needs to exist, especially a good seed.

We can say that one needs a good seed and a good fiancée. 

How do you leave behind a good seed?

If you ask any man, they will say, “I want to be a good fiancee.”  This is because they want to leave a better seed.  The conclusion is that one needs a good partner.

Do you agree? You probably never thought of that fact until now.

After looking from this point-of-view, what was God's ultimate purpose for creating Adam and Eve?  Would you answer, “To make them love each other and make them a couple,” or is your answer, “In order to leave a good seed.”

Why do you love someone or something?  It is for happiness.

Children are the result of love.

Children are the resultant beings to continue to exist.

Why do you think you need a fiancee?  You may be right if you think it is because of love, but what is a higher level than this?

It is children.  Parents cannot help but love their children because they are the result of their love for their fiancee.

People on the whole most likely want something that is connected to them to be the best.  They want their family, nation and world to be the best one.

What is the proper way of thinking?  It is the way of thinking in the other person's shoes.

When we think from this point-of-view, what is the best in a family?

The best in the family is not the most money, knowledge or power, but the parents.

Next, is your lovely husband and wife, and finally your children.

The reason why parents, husband and wife, and children are good is because love is involved in each part.

Parental love is essential to children, the complete oneness of love between husband and wife is essential as brotherly love and children's filial heart toward their parents.

You feel a different extent of feeling according to the depth of the relationship.  IT is only natural that some brethren feel more intimate and love based on the historical close relationship that binds them.

Mothers and fathers love their children dearly because the children originate from them.

Therefore, if their parent's character was taken out of their children, there would be nothing left of their own characters left.




Without his or her parents' characters, a child will become a being who has neither
nature nor relationships.






We are born to testify to love.

If you were born to just shop or eat, how sad that existence is.  If you were just born to study in school, what a headache that would be.

However, if you say, “I was born to love,” you will surely move everybody.
Repeatedly, the question is asked, why were you born.

Love is the motive for your birth. 

You were born by the motive of love as the result of love.

Man and woman are to be born and to be loved by his mother and father.  Even birds or animals love their young because they were born as testifiers to love.

All of them originated from love.

To deny your own cause and effect is the same as denying heaven and earth.

Man is namely destined to follow the way of love so that man can't help but loving his own sons and daughters. This is why parents live for the sake of the other.

Children are happy if they live, filled with their parents' love.  It is a good thing when your mother and father live, being in ecstasy of love.

Western children say they do not need their parents.  This means that they have lost their family which is the main foundation and nest of love.

Parents love their children at the sacrifice of their own life.  This is because children show up in the family on behalf of heaven and earth.  This is why God wishes to go to live in the family together with His sons and daughters.

Moral principles teach people to love their parents, husband and wife and their children, but why?
After man went in the wrong direction with the first parents' mistake, we lost the Master who is in charge of love.

When God speaks of love, He is speaking of endless true love.  He says that love will remain forever.  This love is God's love.

You should know the purpose why you miss someone or love someone is not because of yourself, but because of God.

Look at the one who loves other people based on himself alone.  Then see where he goes after he dies.

Return for Tomorrow's Post: What is the True Way of Life?

This speech is rewritten and derived from “Raising Children in God's Will”

Why Do We Like the Concept Family?

As we witness the chaos of the world, instability in jobs, and relationships, there is one relationship that never changes no matter what - family.

Your siblings, mother, father and extended family will always be tied together by blood ties.

God made this unit of relationships that teach us how to love brothers and sisters, the elderly and the young of the world.

So, why do we like the family?

It is because family provides a base to freely exchange happiness.

This is why we yearn for our hometown where we grew up.  It is the place where our parents and siblings live.

The family is originally a good place.  Why is it good?

Because your parents, siblings and relatives are there.  Therefore, we become homesick for our native land, our hometown.

People think more about their hometown than they think of their nation.  Even living in a large city like New York, people long for their hometown.

Why do you like your families?

It is because the family becomes a free activity center for their parents' love.

God must be able to act freely there.

When God comes upon a society full of people who are more driven internally, and have the shining core of love no matter how shabby they may be, God will be able to act freely around them.

Do you feel uneasy when you visit someone else's home?

Like you are out of place?  This is because there has not been a bond of love established there for you.
You will feel awkward in someone else's dwelling because the love between the people there does not emanate in all four directions but just between the family members.

This was not the original role of the family. Thus we are destined to walk a path in oneness, unity.

The best thing is not decided by you?

Then what would hold the highest value in the family?  

The parents.

You as an individual could have great wealth, knowledge, respect and power, but none of these attributes are superior to the parents' position.

Your spouse would come next and then your children.  When it comes to your family, is there anything more valuable in life than your parents, spouse or children?  There is nothing more precious.

Why do we like our spouse, our parents and our children?

Because love is there.

Parental love is something absolutely needed by the children. 

Also, fraternal love and filial love of the children are absolutely necessary in the family.

Then who are the most beloved people in your families?  Wouldn't they be your parents?  Why do you like them most?

This is because throughout your lives, they are the closest to you in a relationship of love.  Then your beloved spouse comes next.

If husband and wife come to love each other unconditionally rather than set on conditions or circumstances, that love will be the greatest thing that will bring happiness and harmony into the family.

Even if it may not be closely related to an eternal love that is absolutely given by Heaven.  If this love becomes one, that reciprocated between the husband and wife, that is the greatest love in the family.

This is how I see it. Filial love, the love children have toward their parents, is next. If children can sacrifice themselves for their parents and love them with a bright and positive attitude rather than despair, while longing for ideal circumstances in which their love can sprout as the hope of tomorrow, that love will be one with pure and true value for the happiness of that family. 


Thus, if the family that is complete with true parental love, true conjugal love and true filial love, centered on God, then we can only conclude that it is the most ideal family in the world.  A true family.

The Family Is the Base of Eternal Happiness

On what basis can we say that someone is a truly a happy person in our daily life?

Is someone happy because they have some special talent, hold any power or authority?  Do these things alone make a person happy?  They cannot.

Also, can a person that has a lot of money be totally happy because they do not have to envy what others have? No.

Could a person become happy because they obtained a global amount of knowledge or hold some control over the world at will?

As we see in today's climate that, this is not the case.  People cannot truly become happy with just those things.

Even if they do so momentarily, happiness will not be eternal by going this route.  What happens the moments that these material objects are lost?  Can they maintain that state?

Such external things will never be the source of eternal happiness even if a person acquires enough wealth that they do not envy anyone in heaven and earth and sing songs of joy.

They will still feel a gaping hole in their soul and yearn for even more.

Material things may be a means to find happiness, but they are not able to be happiness itself.

Then, what is determined in order to feel happiness?

You must have a beloved spouse, parents and children.  Nobody can deny that the original way to happiness is through the creation of a true family.

We may see that if we lack one of them, we feel sorrow and dissatisfaction will inevitably remain in our hearts.

All people on earth generally feel that the family is a base of happiness. 

A family must have parents as the head of it, like the president of a nation.

People who grow up without parents are called orphans and are seen as pitiful people.  It is pitiful for one to not have parents or a spouse.

The family has parents and a conjugal bond at the same time.

However much the spouses may have loved each other, there will be utter pain and misery when one of them loses the other.

It is the same for when a couple cannot conceive children.

The family must have parents, spouse and children in order to become the foundation for eternal happiness.

God's original purpose for seeking to restore humankind was for His own happiness.

This establishment of happiness cannot take place apart from human beings.  At that point of convergence, it can only be brought about through God's relationship with them.

When all of the ingredients needed for our emotional well-being are present in our family, God also wants to feel happiness in such a setting.

From where does happiness arise?  What kind of setting will allow us to sing songs of joy?  It is in the setting of the family.

This family happiness cannot be attained if there are emotional problems, or if there is no heart or love experienced between the family members.

If a couple cannot have children, also, there cannot be any happiness there.

This is the same for children who do not have parents.  There will be no joy for them.

Where there is a man, there will have to be a woman as his partner. 

This same truth is for the woman.

The husband and wife desire to keep their love at a higher dimension within their subject-object relationship.  Further, they must have children.

A unified family is only realized once a couple has parents above them and children below them.  A family is united vertically (spirit) and horizontally (physical) in this way.

Then upon whom does this family center?

We already know that we center the idea of unity based solely on human beings.

But this method is impossible for two separate beings to come together eternally since they alone cannot pursue a higher value.

But if there is an absolute Subject Partner of love, then the parents will want to become one with this Subject Partner as their center.

That center where all of the family members become one in love, is a place of happiness and hope.

Everything must then be brought into oneness and unified through something more valuable and stimulating.

This is not possible based on our human love alone, but only from God, the true subject partner.

Return for Tomorrow's Post: We Enter Heaven as a Family Unit

This post was rewritten and derived from the textbook, Cheon Seong Gyeong Book Four Chapter Eleven, Section 1 and 2.

The Family is a Training Center

Everyone is a  part of a family unit.  The parents may have divorced, the sisters and brothers may live in separate houses, but the family still exists.

When we stand in the world of space, in order to stay balanced, you need top and bottom, left and right and front and back.

When we deal with relationships concerning top and bottom, left and right, and front and back, also problems in the family, nation and world, there is only one solution.

Just as there has to be these six positions with the individual in the center, there also have to be parents and children, husband and wife, and brothers and sisters.  This also applies to the nation.

The leader is at the center of the nation.  All families should embrace the civilization of east and west, and the civilization of north and south, and all the people of the world as brothers and sister.  Eventually, establishing a family model.

This model is the same for all.  You are the center of that model.  This model represents a principle that requires that from you sprouts your family and expands into the nation world, heaven and earth all the way to God.

The Family is the Central Model for All Beings

You not only want to be the center of the universe, but you want to be the center.

In the same way, the family is the center of the universe.  If you were to think of heaven as the parents, then earth represents the children.

In relation to east and west, east symbolizes the man and the west the woman.  So, after marriage, the woman goes to the place where her husband is.

This is similar to the west reflecting the sunlight that shines from the east.

This is the same for the brother and sister relationship.  When the eldest brother leads a task, the younger brothers and sisters will cooperate.

Each person should, therefore, be in a parent-child relationship, a conjugal relationship and a sibling relationship.  Do you see how this rounds out. These three relationships should meet at some point.

Also, you can see that in these Last Days that all of these relationships have been broken up. This is directly the root cause of all of the world's problems which expands from relationships within the family all the way to the worldwide level.

The central point is one.  The center for the top and bottom, left and right, front and back should be the same.

If the centers are different, then the relationships will all be imbalanced.

So the common central point of top and bottom, left and right, front and back must add up to the number seven.

When this happens, then the family is united in true love with God at the center.  This is where all things form a complete sphere bringing about harmony and unification.

We often think of the number seven as the luckiest number.  Therefore, when we hear this about the number seven it seems believable.  As long as true love never changes, then the central core will turn forever without changing, therefore, realizing the idea of a true family.

Also, since everything is connected to this core, then each of the position are equal.  For example, if the grandfather and his sons and daughters want something and the grandchild is not against it, then all the three generations will come to want it.

The grandfather, grandmother, husband and wife, and sons and daughters will all follow the center.  The parent-child relationship becomes one in terms of love.    The conjugal relationship is one and the sibling relationship becomes one.

They become one body.  So, what do these relationships revolve around?

They revolve around the true love of God who is the center of true love.  In this way, the value of everything becomes equal.

The Family is the Textbook of Love through Which We Can Connect with Universal Love

What is the universe?

God created everything in the universe as a sort of a training aid to help His beloved sons and daughters find the ideal of His true love.

This is why you see a reciprocal relationship in all of existence.

For instance, minerals are based on the reciprocal relationship of subject and object partners.  Protons and electrons exist based on a relationship of subject and object partners.

What is the universe?

We see this in human relationships of teacher and student, husband and wife, and parent and child where there is also interactions between a subject and object partner.

The universe is simply the expansion of a true family.  If you take a close look at the family that has been able to become an ideal of family love, you see that it has a top, middle and bottom.  That is the parents, husband and wife, and children.  You will see left and right and front and back.

This is the principle.

When we talk about top and bottom, this refers to the parents and children.  When we talk about left and right, we mean the husband and wife.  The front and back refers to the brothers and sisters.

How are all of these positions able to become one?

There is no way for it to become eternally one through power, knowledge or money.  If a family was to be united through force, smarts or money, then once these things disappear, the family will separate.  So, what would determine eternal unity of a family?

It is only through love that a family will truly unite.  This is the absolute truth.

If this does not happen, then the sphere cannot be formed.  The top, middle and bottom of the family is the textbook of love.

This is the textbook through which we can experience universal love.

We then go into society and put it into practice.  So, how should we love?

Jesus taught about the kind of love for your neighbor as you love yourself.  What should we do to follow this kind of teaching?  Do we see even Christians living this way in this time and age?

Do Christians unite with brothers and sisters of other faiths?

When you go into the world and see an elderly man who is the same age as your grandfather, treat him the same way you would your own grandfather.  Treat people like your own mothers, fathers and your own sons.

When you are able to go out into the world and live in this way and love people in this way, God will dwell in the midst of that love.

You should know that the world is an exhibition of all people.

  

The people of top, middle bottom, front and back, and left and right are all displayed in the exhibition of all of the world.

What does the Kingdom of Heaven look like?

It is the place where you love the people of the world the way you love your own family. It is where people who do this are the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Your grandfather and grandmother, your mother and father, your wife, brothers and sisters and your own children are four generations.  What do they represent?

They are the textbook where you can deeply experience love, the true love of the universe as people of Heaven. In other words, the family is the foundation, a type of textbook that

They are the textbook through whom you can deeply experience love, the true love of the universe as people of the Kingdom of Heaven. The family is the foundation, a type of textbook that teaches you this love.

We cannot live without learning the love of the universe. 

Your grandfather and grandmother were sent as representatives of all the grandmothers and grandfathers in the spirit world.

God has prepared textbooks and scriptures containing promises which openly say, "Love your grandmother and grandfather."

"Therefore if you love them, I will take it as if you had loved all grandmothers and grandfathers."

Next God would say that since your mother and father are representatives of all the countless mothers and fathers of the world, if you love them to the utmost it will be the exact same as having loved all mothers and fathers because they are the textbook and model of love.

It would be the equivalent of graduating college after many lessons on how to love mothers and fathers.

Furthermore, if you as a man, who represents all men, love a woman who represents all women, then it will be a condition of having loved all women.

Then God would say, "I will take your loving your sons and daughters as you having loved all sons and daughters."

This is how the family becomes the training center to receive such training on loving the world.

This training process which God developed is in accordance with the scriptures.  If the trainees are willing to go out into the world and love the grandmothers and grandfathers of the world in place of their own grandparents, this will save the world and bring a world of peace.

If all the people of the world were raised in such true families, where brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, grandparents and grandchildren each treated each other with respect and true love, when this expands to the world level, then Heaven on Earth is recreated automatically.  Therefore, there will not be true peace in the world until there is peace in the family.

A Training Ground of Love for Entering the Kingdom of Love

This is God's will: to realize the kingdom of love.

Then if God wishes to develop a globalized ideal world of love, then the family is the experimental ground where you earn your credits at such a school.  This is obtained all the way from the elementary level to the bachelor's degree and PhD.

If you were to examine the world carefully, you will see that it is a world where grandfathers and grandmothers live.  It is a world where adults like your aunts and uncles live.

It is a place where your elder brothers and sisters live.  It is a world where youth live and where children live.

So, this place where the middle-aged, elderly, young people and children live are just a larger expansion of the family.  Isn't this so?

The family is the smallest unit within the training center.

It is also a textbook for how to enter the Kingdom of Heaven automatically.

It has four levels: grandfather's level, mother's level, couple's level and siblings level.

Then each of these levels expands into a larger group of grandmothers and grandfather's, mothers and fathers, your own peers, and your own sons and daughters.  Together, they form humanity.

Only families that can love all of humanity as their own spouse and parents, and serve them as their own sons and daughter can inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.  This is amazing.

This is where the right to inherit all of the power and authority of heaven and earth lies.

You receive the right to be registered at the Palace of Peace and the Kingdom of Heaven once you pass to the spirit world.

As discussed, the family is the training ground for the true way to love all of humanity.  

The extension of the family is the world.

The world is made up of smaller worlds: grandfathers' world, grandmothers' world, a world of fathers and mothers, there are husbands' and wives' worlds and sons' and daughters' worlds.

When all of these combine, they make up the whole world.  Therefore, if you are able to love all of the people of the world as your own family, this will lead you toward a straight path to the Kingdom of Heaven.

Thus, the first commandment is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart and soul and with all of your mind.

The second commandment, "Love your neighbor as yourself".  With these two practiced together of loving God and humanity, then everything will be accomplished.  A world of love will follow a people that live in such a way.

No matter how much spiritual training you obtain, if you are unable to love in this way, your training is in vain.  If you do not know how to love God, humankind or the whole universe, you will fail the test.

You should deeply experience love by going through this family training center which is an encapsulation of the whole universe.  Then this expands to loving the world.

When we see the clear-cut point of God's way to train humanity how to love and look at the current situation of the world of broken homes, we see where true restoration should begin.

You have inherited this tradition from your family, which is your training ground, where your mother and father raised you.

If you are able to love your parents more than your wife, love your sons and daughters more than your wife, love humanity more than your wife, and love God more than  your wife, then everything will be accomplished.

Of course, this does not mean to abandon your wife, because loving in this way, each recipient of that love will come to love your wife as well.

Could there be a more glorious place than this?

If you want to love your wife, follow this proper order of love.

Return for Tomorrow's Post: Everyone Desires Good


This post was rewritten and derived from the textbook Cheon Seong Gyeong Book Four, True Family Chapter 3

Children Should Recieve Parental Love

"The uniqueness of true love is vividly demonstrated in family relationships." 

One highly successful marriage program advises husband and wife to make individual lists of the kinds of things that make them feel loved, and then share their lists with their spouses.

A wife might list that she feels deliciously cared for when her husband makes her favorite cup of tea.  The husband may feel loved from the warmth of fresh socks out of the dryer a wife has prepared for him to wear.  If a spouse makes time for considerate little favors, it might not have as much of an effect on the spouse if they do not cater to their specific needs and unique character.

Parents must learn to adjust to the different needs of each of their children who are encouraged and nurtured in their own ways.  Further, as the children grow, their needs grow.

A nine-year old who vies for his mother's kiss may at 10 years old think his mother is smothering him when she does it voluntarily.  What used to work to satisfy the child now has turned into an offense which the parent has to adjust to the uniqueness of the growing individual.

On the same token, children live always learning how to love and relate to the unique adults who are their parents.

One father loved to wrestle with his children and was okay with the children's roughness even if they sat their whole weight on him.  The children found out that when they touched his hair he would lose his temper.  He had a sensitive scalp and hated for his head to be touched.

The children, like the adults, had to adjust to what their father loved.

Even though love is a principle that works and applies to everyone, it also is also tailor made for everyone.  Love is tailor-made to the individual so one can feel uniquely loved.

God as a Parent is the same way.  He gently guides His children through through things that speak to their individual hearts.  Through music, art, literature, sports, pets, dancing-whatever a person loves, God shows His knowledge and appreciation of an individual's uniqueness by speaking to the person's heart.  God uses what a person loves and in essence is saying, "I know you. I understand you.  I love you for who you are."


Society's Problems Begin in Family


All problems originate in the family unit.  What is the cause of juvenile problems?  They stem from emotional issues.  Negative results can stem from not having stable parents, brothers or sisters, and from the unsound man and woman relationship.

Where do we start to correct this destructive problem in children?  We should begin in the family.

"They have parents, but the parental heart is not implanted in the depth of the children's heart. In other words, parental love is not deeply solidified in the bone marrow of the children. From that point, the gap between parent and children expands."

If you grow up in an environment and acquire the feelings of hate instead of the feeling of love, you are more apt to have accidents in adulthood.  One who is a virgin and waits patiently with appreciation can create a pleasant environment in her married life, but if a virgin has an angered heart, she will have an unhappy married life.


Many people curse God when it comes to their unpleasant life.  But once people recognize that the environment in which they live is the environment they created among themselves they will begin to see that God has created a fair world.  It is the same as the law of attraction.  You create what you think.

When should parents begin to give love to their children?

As soon as children are born, parents should give 100% parental love, otherwise, children will be dominated by dissatisfaction.  No one can measure love, but if a parents has a 1, 000 units of love, then they should give a 1, 000 units to their children.

If parents give 900 and hold back 100, the children will feel will feel their parents didn't give them any love at all.  Children are only satisfied when their parents give their whole love.  Isn't this true in all love relationships?

Children are treated no different than pets nowadays.  As soon as children leave the hospital, they are placed in their own separate room in the home.  Seldom does the children sleep with their parents.  Mothers seldom feed their own milk to their children.  This is why parents cannot feel the warmth of their parents.  If babies don't sleep with their parents, they will be no different from a house pet.  Children shouldn't be treated in this way.

Several babies sleeping with their parents is a beautiful scene. It is good to sleep with babies. If there's not enough space, you can make space by sleeping upside down.

Use your brain to make the arrangement. It is a little uncomfortable for a small baby to sleep between huge parents, but it feels good for everyone. Babies should feel the body warmth of parents.



God's Love For His Children


Yet, we should not forget the greatest of all parents, our Heavenly True Parent who created the universe.

Has anyone ever thought of God having the inspiration to create humanity and filling the world with pleasure for them the way a human couple feels when they are pregnant?  If we are like our Father in Heaven, He must have had great anticipation in wait for His first son and daughter.  He waited millions of years for our creation.

The author of the Divine Principle gives the most beautiful explanation of God preparing the world for His children:


"Like the most nurturing of parents, God prepared a nursery and a setting for His children to grow in.

The tender sparkle of the stars in the soothing depths of night, accompanied by the gentle glow of the moon—enough light to comfort and reassure without disturbing the sleep—in this and in thousands of other ways, God shows his care and devotion to the comfort and joy of His children.

The gush of incomparable sweetness in a sun-warmed apple plucked right from the tree; the kiss of a cool breeze off a verdant river on a hot day; the smells of holiday meats and spices as a person comes in from the crisp outdoors; the comfort and mystery of birdsong in the morning—earth is indeed paradise.

The intricacy and fabulousness of God’s living creation cannot be compared to even the finest, most exalted works of art in the museums of the world. God’s creation surpasses them all. And it is all for the sake of His children."



Return for Tomorrow's Post: True Parents' Heart Wants to Give Everything

Textbook: "Blessing and Ideal Family 2" and "True Love"

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