Four Worlds of Heart in Family

All the evidence from the previous posts show that there is something important for human development in the very structure of the family.

Reverend Sun Myung Moon summarizes that roles in the family create a certain 'realm of heart'. This heart fostered between the relationships between mother-father, parents-children, siblings, and God and family becomes a school for love.

People learn about love through being sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers.

“The family teaches by its form,” as educator Gabriel Moran explains it.

Each realm of heart reflects an aspect of God's love.

God is the Parent of all parents. He has the absolute love that surpasses the love of even model parents. With that love He can embrace all the parents of the world. In fact, God created man from His parental love.

Without that love from God, we die.

God is always ready to give the type of love that is best suited for the person who is seeking a relationship with Him.

If we are ready for parental love from God, He is prepared to give it. If we want brotherly love, conjugal love, or the love of a friend from Him, He is ready with these.

It is so amazing and wonderful that God who is a God of love protects us in every possible relationship

When we fulfill each realm of heart (children's realm, siblings realm conjugal realm, and the parent's realm) we grow to resemble God's many-faceted love.

Each type of love that is exhibited in the family forms a world of experiences and responsibilities that becomes a matrix for the growth of heart.

Lessons in Loving Others

The family works to school people to have other-centered love through providing crucial relationships to learn from. Each realm of heart involves relating to significant others or partners in love.

In the child's ream of heart, the parents become their most significant other. The sibling's realms of heart, their brothers/sisters and peers are increasingly significant. Within the spouse's realms of heart, one has a relationship with the opposite sex who are emotionally and physically committed for the rest of one's life.

Children are the significant other in the parent's realm of heart.

True love begins with the infant responding to a parent in the child’s realm of love.

A baby is not alone in the universe. He or she is compelled to bond with others by all the forces within.

Many theorists conclude that a baby's attachment to their parent is a necessary building block of relating to others with empathy for the rest of their life.

The quality of the interactions between a parent and child is an essential love relationship that gives each a lifelong perspective on others.

When brothers and sisters interact with their siblings, this realm of heart offers a new territory where the growing child must accommodate others. He or she now shares the parents' universe with their sibilings.

One learns they must not hurt their sibling but must wait their turn and share.

In turn, the relationship of brother and sister in the family can offer joy of companionship and expand each child's love into new dimensions.

When a child must cooperate with their playmates or children at school, issues of fair play, justice, and honesty come to the foreground as he or she learns that there are yet others who need respect and accommodations.

Through experiencing the sibling's realm of heart, a child begins to relate to the world of their peers. The repertoire they obtain through these relationship expand dramatically, as well as their heart for others in society as they mature.

Maturity brings the world of the opposite sex into sharp focus.

A newlywed couple often feel that they are the only two people in the world.

This is how rich the world or realm they occupy together. It is an exclusive, intensely exciting, deeply affecting circle of relationships in which each will learn to love someone who is truly their 'other'. 

They will experience a different emotion and mental make-up than with others they encounter.

When one becomes a parent, he or she enters a realm of relationship with a child that opens up a whole new world of loving and caring.

The parent's realm of love is perhaps the most transformative relationship that resembles the heart and love of God the most closely.

With their children, parents have a dependent 'other' who needs and demands more than anyone else has demanded in a lifetime. They must be attendant to their growth. As a parent, rewards and blessings are enormous as well as anxieties and emotional taxes.

The heart grows here earnestly through other-centered love.

Grandparent's love is an extension of the parent's realm of heart. This love has its own special gifts to bestow and receive from the grandparents.

When we grow and understand the inner workings of the family through experiencing these four realms of heart, we grow to appreciate the brilliantly designed vehicle of emotional, moral and spiritual growth.

The impact of your family does not stop within its own relationships either. The lessons one learns from their interactions in the family is profound and far-reaching. It extrapolates into a person's orientation toward the rest of the world.

Ethicist James Q. Wilson said, “The family is a continuing locus of reciprocal obligations that constitute an unending school for moral instruction . . . . We learn to cope with the people of this world because we learn to cope with the members of our family.”

Photos courtesy of : freedigitalphotos.net 

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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.