A Prayer: Allow Us to Discover Where Our Hearts Lie

Anything that is absolute has qualities that are unchanging and are everlasting.  Prayers are the same. True Father, as Rev. Sun Myung Moon is called by his followers, has set records with 20-hour speeches and strong fervent prayers where he not only sweat blood but also tears.  The following prayer was given in 1965.  One can feel the Father's heart from the deep path he had laid out on earth for God and His children to be set free:

"Father, please allow us to discover the condition in which our hearts now lie. We are aware that although our bodies have gathered together, each heart moves in its own direction. We are aware that we who were created by You should move only according to Your desire, and just as You created Adam, so too our hearts should be molded according to Your desire. Now our bodies have come together to form one altar, but we are concerned as to whether the true natures and essential natures of our hearts have become the temples in which You may dwell.

Please forgive us that even with such hearts we yearn for You, our precious Father. We are painfully aware of how much we need to feel the sensation that comes when our insufficient hearts brush against Your internal character and are suddenly lifted up.

We cannot but consider within the depths of our hearts how through Your history of restoration You have sought joy through calm discussion and have sought to manifest our missions solemnly. No one ever welcomed our Father solemnly or stood in a position for You to express Your hidden secrets. Through this moment we have taken to heart how it was only our Father who cried, and only our Father who suffered. Our Heavenly Father should be the True Father of all mankind, and our Heavenly Father and we ourselves must establish a three-dimensional relationship centered on eternal life.

Although we must become sons and daughters who realize these facts, if such a realization does not sprout from deep within our hearts, how can we call ourselves Your sons? How can we call ourselves Your daughters? When we realize that no ties or connections bind us together, we see that we also have no relationship with the Kingdom of Heaven which You would give us. Neither have we anything to do with the place for Your rest after You have suffered through the long history of resentment. Our suffering Father, our loving Father! Should You forsake our pitiful selves, we can only be buried in eternal death. What abilities do we have? We are so weak and so lacking in every way. We feel nothing but fear, and with such hearts receive Your love; turning our eyes toward heaven, we desperately await the hand of salvation.

Oh Father, we pray from deep within our hearts: please save our pitiful selves. History has reached its consummation. Father, You are surely aware of how the surging waves of death attack us from every direction and threaten to swallow us up. Because You have maintained a heart of concern for us and have kept the will to sacrifice for us, when You see us in our present situation, Your heart must rend asunder. Father, we beg that You may pity us and fulfill this moment.

Father, in this moment, we would like to confess our lonesome hearts before You and exchange them for Your heart. Surely You are aware of the pitiful situation we are in. We cannot live unless we can exchange our inexpressibly sad and grieving hearts for Your heart of joy and life. We pray, Father, that You may forgive us. Father even though You have sacrificed Yourself for us and taken upon Yourself all our suffering, still, because we are so fallen, we must again seek Your salvation.

Oh Father! Please let it be that the hearts of all gathered here may flow freely among themselves. Although we once were stumbling now we are all gathered here as brothers and sisters. We have gathered here to turn toward heaven, yearning for the Heavenly Word of restoration that will allow us to reach for Your original idea. So we beg that You take pity on us and raise us up. But who among us can stand before You in confidence?

Because, Father, You are confident, we have sought to be confident, and because You have told us how it must become, we have sought to believe this way. But if there is even the smallest mistake here, You will have to forgive us again, so we beg that You will give us direct guidance.

Father, we pray that You take pity on the race of thirty thousand. Without knowing the proper road to follow, our brothers can only wander aimless, crying and screaming on the road of life or death. We know, Father, that Satan is hunting for them and his power is increasing.

We must become people capable of feeling grief over this reality and testify to the road they must follow and decrease the power of Satan over them. In this way, we must raise the foundation of victory.

Oh Father! If our strength is not sufficient, please give us Your courage. Just as You directed Joshua and Caleb to be strong and of good courage, we beg that You may grant us Your words at this time. We pray that we may become heavenly sons and daughters who will offer the fate of the race of thirty thousand before our Father's altar, link them to Your life, and pay any sacrifice and fight to the end when Satan attacks trying to sever this precious lifeline.

Even today Your sons and daughters are scattered across the country. Father, they are bowing down before You and in tears they cry out with their sad hearts. On this tragic course where men are not able to comfort one another, but must live in a bitter, lonely environment, please take pity on Your sons and daughters who have so few brothers and sisters to whom they can confess their sorrow.

In this moment, by softly caressing each other's hearts we have seen how the world of Your heart moves beyond space and time. Because in this moment our hearts may be struck by Your guidance, we may experience a moment of the joy of being submerged in Your heart. If it may be allowed for this one brief moment, we beg that You may bring us Your word and hope that You may somehow spend this moment in our midst.

We do not ask for words of blessing. We only need the awareness that now is the time when we must know how we are lacking, and now is the time to know the heart that fears having to come to judgment without having wiped away the lineage of sin.

We pray that with such a body and mind, we may be able to approach the word that is permitted to us. We pray that the heart of he who speaks the word and the hearts of those who are about to receive the word may not be separated, but will become one heart and be able to touch Your heart that overflows in deep truth and love.

We pray that in this moment, we may take on our Father's internal character and humbly bow before You, and that this may be a moment in which the heart of respect and honor may flow among us and that there may not even be the smallest opening through which Satan may invade. We pray in the name of our precious Lord. Amen.

Father, please allow us to discover the condition in which our hearts now lie. We are aware that although our bodies have gathered together, each heart moves in its own direction. We are aware that we who were created by You should move only according to Your desire, and just as You created Adam, so too our hearts should be molded according to Your desire. Now our bodies have come together to form one altar, but we are concerned as to whether the true natures and essential natures of our hearts have become the temples in which You may dwell.

Please forgive us that even with such hearts we yearn for You, our precious Father. We are painfully aware of how much we need to feel the sensation that comes when our insufficient hearts brush against Your internal character and are suddenly lifted up.

We cannot but consider within the depths of our hearts how through Your history of restoration You have sought joy through calm discussion and have sought to manifest our missions solemnly.

No one ever welcomed our Father solemnly or stood in a position for You to express Your hidden secrets. Through this moment we have taken to heart how it was only our Father who cried, and only our Father who suffered. Our Heavenly Father should be the True Father of all mankind, and our Heavenly Father and we ourselves must establish a three-dimensional relationship centered on eternal life.

Although we must become sons and daughters who realize these facts, if such a realization does not sprout from deep within our hearts, how can we call ourselves Your sons? How can we call ourselves Your daughters?

When we realize that no ties or connections bind us together, we see that we also have no relationship with the Kingdom of Heaven which You would give us. Neither have we anything to do with the place for Your rest after You have suffered through the long history of resentment. Our suffering Father, our loving Father! Should You forsake our pitiful selves, we can only be buried in eternal death.

What abilities do we have? We are so weak and so lacking in every way. We feel nothing but fear, and with such hearts receive Your love; turning our eyes toward heaven, we desperately await the hand of salvation.

Oh Father, we pray from deep within our hearts: please save our pitiful selves. History has reached its consummation. Father, You are surely aware of how the surging waves of death attack us from every direction and threaten to swallow us up. Because You have maintained a heart of concern for us and have kept the will to sacrifice for us, when You see us in our present situation, Your heart must rend asunder. Father, we beg that You may pity us and fulfill this moment.

Father, in this moment, we would like to confess our lonesome hearts before You and exchange them for Your heart. Surely You are aware of the pitiful situation we are in. We cannot live unless we can exchange our inexpressibly sad and grieving hearts for Your heart of joy and life. We pray, Father, that You may forgive us. Father even though You have sacrificed Yourself for us and taken upon Yourself all our suffering, still, because we are so fallen, we must again seek Your salvation.

Oh Father! Please let it be that the hearts of all gathered here may flow freely among themselves. Although we once were stumbling now we are all gathered here as brothers and sisters. We have gathered here to turn toward heaven, yearning for the Heavenly Word of restoration that will allow us to reach for Your original idea. So we beg that You take pity on us and raise us up.

But who among us can stand before You in confidence? Because, Father, You are confident, we have sought to be confident, and because You have told us how it must become, we have sought to believe this way. But if there is even the smallest mistake here, You will have to forgive us again, so we beg that You will give us direct guidance.

Father, we pray that You take pity on the race of thirty thousand. Without knowing the proper road to follow, our brothers can only wander aimless, crying and screaming on the road of life or death. We know, Father, that Satan is hunting for them and his power is increasing.

We must become people capable of feeling grief over this reality and testify to the road they must follow and decrease the power of Satan over them. In this way, we must raise the foundation of victory. Oh Father! If our strength is not sufficient, please give us Your courage.

Just as You directed Joshua and Caleb to be strong and of good courage, we beg that You may grant us Your words at this time. We pray that we may become heavenly sons and daughters who will offer the fate of the race of thirty thousand before our Father's altar, link them to Your life, and pay any sacrifice and fight to the end when Satan attacks trying to sever this precious lifeline.

Even today Your sons and daughters are scattered across the country. Father, they are bowing down before You and in tears they cry out with their sad hearts. On this tragic course where men are not able to comfort one another, but must live in a bitter, lonely environment, please take pity on Your sons and daughters who have so few brothers and sisters to whom they can confess their sorrow.

In this moment, by softly caressing each other's hearts we have seen how the world of Your heart moves beyond space and time. Because in this moment our hearts may be struck by Your guidance, we may experience a moment of the joy of being submerged in Your heart. If it may be allowed for this one brief moment, we beg that You may bring us Your word and hope that You may somehow spend this moment in our midst.

We do not ask for words of blessing. We only need the awareness that now is the time when we must know how we are lacking, and now is the time to know the heart that fears having to come to judgment without having wiped away the lineage of sin.

We pray that with such a body and mind, we may be able to approach the word that is permitted to us. We pray that the heart of he who speaks the word and the hearts of those who are about to receive the word may not be separated, but will become one heart and be able to touch Your heart that overflows in deep truth and love.

We pray that in this moment, we may take on our Father's internal character and humbly bow before You, and that this may be a moment in which the heart of respect and honor may flow among us and that there may not even be the smallest opening through which Satan may invade. We pray in the name of our precious Lord. Amen.


Please Return for Tomorrow's Post: Messiah in the Millennium

We Come From One Root

"The root of the individual, the root of the family, the root of the clan, and the root of the nation are all the same. What this means is that if you look from the world's viewpoint, and you trace the root up or down, we all come back to the same root." 

This is true for the nation, the clan, the family, and even the individual. 


All countries eventually can trace back to one root.  The root is all the same.  Through this one root, all families, nations and even the world must be connected.  Since there is only one root for all, then we have only one trunk and a unity of branches.  There aren't different trunks or different roots.

When we accomplish this connection and unity in deed, the world will come into unity. 

If we were to ask people of different nations where their root lies, they would give many different answers.  Their answers may only be local.  For example, if you ask an American this question, they would say, "My root is Washington".  This does not apply to the whole world.

Does God think that the root of mankind is Washington?

Japanese people would say they trace their root to the goddess Amaterasu Omino Kami.    But now we know that everyone can be traced to the same root.

There is only one root, but humanity has not been able to see the root of it all.  Since no one can identify the true root, the Messiah returns to identify where the false root of division began.  Also to reveal what we think our roots are and then present the true root.



The Root is True Love

What is the completion of the ideal of creation?

The Messiah clearly defines God's will in simple terms.  God's will is to accomplish the ideal of creation.  Period.  Simple isn't it?  God is an absolute God.

Since He is absolute, does he have two different ideas or just one?  Absolutely one ideal.  Even if peace seems impossible to humanity, God has never wavered away from His dream of accomplishing Heaven on Earth.  This is the logical conclusion.

When we complete the four-position foundation (parents' love, siblings' love, childrens' love, each centered on God's love) then the completion of the ideal of true love is accomplished.  Everything important is there.



Creating True Love

The amazing fact is that the Family Federation has achieved these.

All of the thinking, teaching and action of the Unification Church is founded on these consistent lines: True Love, the four-position foundation and the ideal of creation.

The ideal of creation is to create the four-position foundation(sibling, parent, conjugal and God's love).  Then we must understand deeply the descriptions of all relationships of creation and the importance of the main ideas.

Even though it begins from a concept, it is reality. If you open up your spiritual eyes, you can go ask a big tree, "What is your purpose in life?

To accomplish this idea, first, we perfect heaven on earth and through this, heaven in spirit world will automatically appear.  Currently, there is only Paradise in which Jesus spoke.

We cannot enter heaven alone without our family.

As we discussed before, what wife would enjoy heaven while her husband spent eternity in hell?  When we catch a hold of God's True Love, then wherever we go and what we do will be connected to God.  This is reality and not just a concept.

What about a big rock, and belongs to the mineral kingdom? If you were to ask why does it exist, it  would answer you, "I exist for the sake of love."

Why did you come into existence or why do you breathe?

You exist for the sake of love.  Even a large rock that belongs to the mineral kingdom and doesn't seem to have much value would answer and say, "I exist for the sake of love".  Even the atomic kingdom, electrons and neutrons would answer the same way.  There is no way to deny it.  This is the reason all things were created in pairs: it is for love.

Love is the Beginning

Because of True Love and starting from True Love, the whole world came into being.  True love was the beginning of the concept of the universe.

We can even extend this and say that God came into existence for the purpose of love.  If love did not come into existence, then God, too wouldn't have a reason to exist.  Before thinking of the universe, we can think of True Love.

Before we can understand the deep meaning of True Love, we can see the concept of the male and female or the subject and object concept conveyed in all of creation, even at the subatomic level.  Everything in existence has that dual characteristic.  Take time to think of one exception, but you will find none.

Scientists maintain that the universe is held together by a force or a power, but they stop there.  They do not bring into account the logical steps that force only comes about because there was first an action that brought it about.

Without action, there is no force.

Which is first:  force takes place because of action or action takes place because of force?

Which one is first?


Reverend Sun Myung Moon gives an example to answer this question:

"When a man grows up, real love power does not act upon him. He has no involvement in love action. He grows up by the energy of man. With that he grows, but love is yet to come. His mind and body have to take action and then he grows, becoming older and older.

When he meets his spouse, a tremendous power takes place. Before that, there is action, but even before the action something else must exist first. That is subject and object relationship. In a man, he gets power when his mind and body come into unity.

He has two eyes instead of one, and two nostrils; everything comes in two. We see that subject and object relationship is everywhere and it exists for the sake of love.

We see development in this order: love between subject and object, then love action gives rise to the force. That is the order."SMM



Love Creates Joy

As soon as a husband and wife who exhibit True Love and their eyes meet, they are attracted to one another and nothing can stop them.  When all of the five senses meet each other, nothing will stop them.  Embodied with this love power, the couple can go through fire, water, anywhere.  That is the power of True Love.

This cannot be exchanged or converted into any value of money.  Even if the woman has millions and billions of dollars and is the wealthiest woman on earth, once she is captured in love then all things don't matter anymore.  God will be filled with joy and laughter at the sight of such a scene.  This is how we feel, too.

God invests His whole being and forgets, then He invests again and forgets all too willingly and happily because of love.  Without this kind of heart of not looking to receive, He would not be able to continue to do so.

For the man of love, the more he adds to this pool of love, the happier he becomes until later he can fly.  He will cruise the universe like the world of stars.  If you embrace a star while enraptured in love, it will start to dance and God will dance, also.  This is the power of love.



Do we Value Love?

How much do we value this love of God?

Imagine a kid that is in grammar school -  a boy or girl who receives a large chunk of a diamond but they do not know that it is a diamond or know its worth.  How will they treat this diamond?  This is the problem we see in the world situation today.

On the other hand, one who works hard and experiences the pain of dying to obtain this object, then you readily learn and understand the value of that diamond.  The only way that we can understand this is through suffering and sacrifice.  Nobody likes this, just as no student likes the act of studying to get the top grades.



Love Creates Peace

Love has the power to purchase, sell or unite a nation.  It is that powerful.  You have heard of the political marriages they used to perform centuries ago.  Two countries united in exchanged marriages between royalty of either country.  King Edward forsook the throne for a marriage to Wallace Simpson.

People get excited and laugh at the jokes and commentary of entertainers whenever they speak about the topic of love.  Other topics do not capture laughter from the bottom of the audiences hearts as much as the topic of love.

"No other church ever talks about love so much as the topic of this sermon."

It becomes a very legitimate statement that anyone or any minister whose sermon centers on love and makes everybody elated, happy and laughing, would become the source of peace and happiness.

When a teaching focuses it center on love, it can be the source of peace.  Peace will come from that.  Politicians, philosophers, economists and people from all different walks of life would come together for the topic of love because it is the root of their lives.



'Love Me' is False Love

We hear all talks about love and different kinds of love, but have we heard about love for the sake of other people?

People say, "Love me.".  This kind of person wants to draw love from other people.  There are even books and advice columns on how to attract love from others.  This is not the kind of love we have been talking about.

We are only talking about how to give love, that is what makes it different.

All these divided things now move toward being united because of this teaching and the knowledge of how to love for the sake of others.

From True Love, new hope, a new idea, and a new starting point have appeared.

Love was destroyed and divided.  The history of humankind has turned into a history of self-centered love away from God's original ideal.  How can we realize a peaceful world when all the broken situations are surrounding us.  We can only go this path through True Love that has the power to mend the past.

God's viewpoint of True Love is that the root comes from True Parents (restored fallen parents Adam and Eve).  Now that we have entered the age of True Parents or Enlightenment, brothers and sisters are being taught a new kind of love in which we live for the sake of others.




Free Sex and Drugs

Man needs to constantly be satisfied.

He has a spiritual antenna that communicates with the high level of the spirit world.  Man cannot live without the love, emotion and enlightenment that this antenna picks up.

Now all communication has been cut off from the spirit world and man does not know where to get that fulfillment.  So, what do they do instead?

They do drugs, drink alcohol and indulge in risky behavior to maintain an equivalent high to excite the body.

We as the human race have lost our emotional attachment to True Love on the vertical plane(spiritual) and can only find it through the horizontal way(physical) to compensate for this lack of communication with spirit.  Every family and nation have been touched by this tragedy.

It is called free sex.  Teens and even adults find out too late that when they indulge in sex without any connection to God and outside of a God-defined marriage that it never fully satisfies them as they had expected.

Sometimes leaving a bigger hole in which they were trying to fill in the beginning.  Then they turn to drugs to try to forget about this pain.  But everyone knows that the drug world is also a bottomless pit that will never fulfill our human desire for God's love.
         



The Universe Protects Love

What Father is pointing out is that everything that comes into power, everything that is subject and object in the pair system, is protected by the universe.

If there is an imbalance, the universe eliminates it.

Man and woman are a pair.  They become a pair at the universal level embracing point.  The nation's center it the president or the king as a plus and the people are a minus.

They combine into one and then they attend the world which is the next level up.  Then as a whole, they embrace the larger heavenly fate or destiny.

Americans should change their direction from the individualistic way toward this true standard way of living.  If the presidential administration and the American people do not change, the heavenly fate will chase them out.  No matter how rich or how strong America is, they will immediately break down.
Don't we see that this is already the case?



Individualism is Hell


Individualism has made a great nation of America into a small one that is full of bickering and complaints.  It can be compared to the nation's symbol of the great eagle.  It was created to spread its wings and explore the great plains around cliffs to capture its food supply.

But if you were to catch the eagle and just give him the bare minimum of rations so it could live, how great would the eagle be?

This is what individualism, living for oneself, has done to a once prosperous nation.  Are people exploding with happiness here in  America or unhappy?  They are miserable.  They are living like in the dungeons of hell even with such prosperity surrounding them in their daily lives.

On the other hand, how happy would an eagle be that had once been captured and now is finally released from its cage and is liberated?



True Love is Eternal

No matter how old the earth becomes, the principles of True Love continues.  The direction and action of True Love will remain the same throughout history and into the future.  Even before creation, this concept of True Love existed.

After Adam and Eve were created and after the fallen world came into being, the same concept of absolute pure love was the center of hope for all of the surrounding things to be taken away and cleaned up.


Then they can be connected to the new world.



The Church Restores True Love


Why was the Family Federation formerly known as the Unification Church founded?  It was so all that was lost through the actions of the first human parents can be restored and to bring liberation to God when the ideal is completed.

This is the church's mainstream thought.  In order for restoration to take place, all ideals should be realized centering on True Love.

Should people reject or welcome such a movement?  This is God's ideal and the tool which He brought the Messiah as the Second Advent.  It is to make the four-position foundation of the family centered on God with True Love as the core.

That is the purpose of the Unification Movement.

Return for Tomorrow's Post: We Come From One Root

This text was rewritten and taken from the speech: The Establishment of the Unification Church and the Mainstream Thought of the Dispensational History," the sermon given on May 1, 1993, at the Belvedere, International Training Center.

Before and After the Marriage Ceremony

Welcome to another week of inspiring words based on the Divine Principle written by Dr. Rev. Sun Myung Moon.  We'll continue the topic of marriage and ideal couples centered on God.  In the Unification Church, members are taught the principles of the Bible from God's point of view and how He had planned a world of peace starting with the first family of Adam and Eve. 

Once members align themselves to these principles on the individual level, they are ready for what is called the Blessing Ceremony.  This ceremony is the matching of two people who most likely never met before.  It is different from any minister giving two people in marriage.  Unification Church members believe Father Moon is the Messiah who God uses to give marriage DIRECTLY.  Through this, the couple is engrafted to God's direct and pure blood lineage and pass it to their children who are then born without the ORIGINAL sin connected to Satan's blood lineage.  Father Moon believes through the restoration of family through intercultural and interracial marriages, world peace can gradually be achieved. 

This movement is worldwide with millions of members all over the world. The following is a speech he gives about love and the blessing:


"Have you ever thought about why I give such long sermons? I have a dramatic answer: because I hate to leave you. I enjoy every minute of my time with you. I study each of you, looking at your features, observing your reactions, inspecting your eyes, nose and mouth. I think about what kind of person would be your ideal mate. That is why the matchings (arranged marriage Blessing) go so fast: I have already done my homework!

I'm not talking this way just to be charming. I mean it. A godly person should be fond of other people. Godly people should love and enjoy their fellow men. Whether you go east or west, north or south, whether it is day or night, it makes no difference.

You must enjoy people. That is why people feel so drawn to me. If Africans were told not to come here, they would feel very sorrowful. They would try the front door, back door and side door and find some way of entering.

Why?

Because they would be attracted to the person who loves and cares most deeply for Africa. That is the result of my ideology. I want to meet everybody and establish bonds with them. I want to love all Americans; I love America more than the Americans do.

Young people are most sensitive to the magnetic power of love.

Even before I came to the United States, I knew that young people would be attracted to me, and my prediction was absolutely correct. You are young people, aren't you? Actually, what I am saying is simply that young people have purer minds than older people. Young people are more attracted to true love.


Yearning for People

Have you also been longing for other people? Have you been missing others, yearning to care for them?

Throughout my entire life, my job has been to love people and pray for them. I find that my prayers are answered; my prayers become reality.

Whenever I meet someone, I enjoy being with him or her; I can entertain, care for and love that person. When people are in love, there are no strange feelings between them. It makes no difference what habits they may have. It makes no difference whether they eat kimchee and kocheejang, or cheese and butter. There are no barriers between lovers. Their union is the beautiful culmination of love. Nothing else is more important.

A perfect plus is like a dynamo; it always creates a perfect minus. It happens automatically, without effort. Wherever a perfect plus is found, a perfect minus appears. If you are a perfect plus, you can sit in the middle of a village doing nothing, and the villagers will come to you automatically.

People are always drawn to me. Do you feel the same way about me? If I touch your hand, do you feel bad or good? How do you men feel? How do you women feel?

Many members think that if they could only shake hands with me once, their heaven would be guaranteed. But they haven't had the chance yet. My handshake is very expensive! I seldom shake anybody's hand, but still people follow me. 

Love Opens Every Door

Imagine someone who has just met a woman for whom he feels a tremendous attraction. Perhaps the two have just recently fallen in love. But then that man meets the Unification Church and he completely forsakes his lover.

Then he begins to yearn day and night, even weeping with longing to meet Reverend Moon. Only love can explain this. Only God's love can work this kind of magic. Love opens every door, including the door to the Kingdom of Heaven.

Such a person may come to where I am staying and I may yell at him, "Get out of here! Why are you sticking around?" But actually, if he loves me so much, I am already living with him in spirit. I will always remain with him.

At night, such a person doesn't have to worry about walking down a dark road, because I will take his hand and lead him. He could even close his eyes while walking down an alley, and I could tell him to step down and he would automatically do it. If I told him to step up, turn left or turn right, he would do so without even opening his eyes. That is how love works.

Physically, I have only one body; I am physically limited. Spiritually, however, I can be a million persons; such a thing is possible spiritually. I am known as a mysterious person, someone with mystical qualities, but actually it is not unusual.

Many, many times throughout the years and decades of my life, I have shed tears out of longing for God. When I cried out for God, missing Him, aching for Him, the entire spirit world would open up to me.

You should long for me just as much as I long for God. Actually, people in the Unification Church who don't long for me, who don't miss me, who have no tearful desire for me are not really members of the Unification Church. When you do reach that level of longing, you can immediately achieve unity, and the entire spirit world will open up to you.

Lawful, Public Love
My concept is that we should be people of deep longings; we should enjoy every minute we spend with someone. When we care about others, we have no dull moments. Meeting others is the proper job for people of God. That is what my life is all about. I am an expert at meeting others.

Someone who comes to meet me at East Garden for the first time may plan to stay only half an hour, but he discovers it isn't so easy to leave. I never tell anyone not to go, but people just don't want to get up and leave. This is a result of the power of love that draws people to me.

People are supposed to long for and miss one another. If love depended on appearances, an ugly person would have a burdensome life. Therefore, God, who is the king of wisdom and justice, designed us to be lovers. When you are in love, nothing matters; ugliness is no concern; you can accept everything.

However, there is one important principle in matters of love. It should be a lawful, public love; that means unselfish love. True love is definitely public love. Through true love you can gain everything, even the spirit world. Since you cannot go alone to the spirit world, you need to go with your beloved. Therefore, a truly loving person can open up the spirit world.

Those of you who are engaged, raise your hands. Your engagement is unique. Many of you were engaged to a stranger. But even so, when you first looked at that stranger, you didn't hate him or her, did you? After looking at the stranger, you didn't want to go anywhere else.

That is the spirit I live by at East Garden. I cherish everyone who comes to sit with me, considering each as my beloved."SMM


Return for tomorrow's Post: God Brings Union Between Man and Woman

This text was rewritten a taken from the Textbook: True Love Volume One, The Restoration of Love written by Dr. Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Church.

Don't Doubt in Dark What God Told You in Light

The following text was given by Rev. Tom Cutts is the District Director of the six Southern states of Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. He and his wife, Angelika, were matched by True Parents and Blessed with 2075 Couples in Madison Square Garden in 1982. They have three sons and one daughter:

My friends, you were chosen to be free. So don't use your freedom as an excuse to do anything you want. Use it as an opportunity to serve each other with love. All that the Law says can be summed up in the command to love others as much as you love yourself. But if you keep attacking each other like wild animals, you had better watch out or you will destroy yourselves.

If you are guided by the Spirit, you won't obey your selfish desires. The Spirit and your desires are enemies of each other. They are always fighting each other and keeping you from doing what you feel you should. But if you obey the Spirit, the Law of Moses has no control over you.





People's desires make them give in to immoral ways, filthy thoughts, and shameful deeds. They worship idols, practice witchcraft, hate others, and are hard to get along with. People become jealous, angry, and selfish. They not only argue and cause trouble, but they are envious. They get drunk, carry on at wild parties, and do other evil things as well. I told you before, and I am telling you again: No one who does these things will share in the blessings of God's kingdom.

God's Spirit makes us loving, happy, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. There is no law against behaving in any of these ways. And because we belong to Christ Jesus, we have killed our selfish feelings and desires. God's Spirit has given us life, and so we should follow the Spirit.

Galatians 5:13-26

“…what God has spoken to you in the Light.” Has God spoken to you? I have neighbors and relatives who don’t believe there is a God. There are others who believe that God created everything, but they cannot imagine that this Creator can personally relate to them, care about them, wants them to be happy, and wants the best for them.

I was in Las Vegas last month for an International Leadership Conference, and one participant from our district told me he was an atheist. I’ll call him Steve, though that is not his name. Steve does not believe in God. He certainly does not believe that there is a God who can speak to him. But while he was in Vegas he had a curious experience.

When Steve arrived at our hotel, he saw three teenage girls get out of a car. They wore high heel shoes, bright colored hot-pants, fishnet stockings, tops that exposed their tummies, and lots of make-up. They were teenage prostitutes.

Steve has two daughters himself, and when he saw these girls he actually started sobbing. Right there in his taxi, he broke down in tears. He surprised himself by how upset he was. Steve shared this experience with me, and challenged me saying, “How can you say there is a God? If there was a God, He wouldn’t let these young girls’ lives be ruined this way.”

I said to him, “Steve, your reaction, proves to me that there IS a God. You could have lusted for the girls, or judged them in disgust, or simply ignored them. Instead you felt the heart of a concerned father. Don’t you find it amazing that you cried for kids whom you had never met before? Where did that emotion come from? It didn’t just come out of the thin air.”

There has to be a source of our personality and our emotions. Not only did God create our physical bodies, but he is also the source of our personality and emotions. That means that God is a Being of Personality and Emotion. That’s why we refer to God as Heavenly Father.

He is a real Being who suffers when any of His children are abused. Through Steve’s emotions, God was speaking to him. Steve was experiencing the heart of God when he shed tears for those three girls. I don’t think I convinced him that God exists, but I did get him to wonder about his own passionate reaction, and where those powerful feelings came from.

The founder of our church, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, has established a special mission in Las Vegas. Right now there is a saying that, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” This means that people go to Vegas to do all sorts of things. Things they would rather the folks back home not know about. So, their naughty secret “stays in Vegas”. Rev. Moon wants to change the whole environment there. He wants Las Vegas to become known worldwide as a good place for families.

To make that change Rev. Moon is promoting Absolute Sexual Morality. Fundamentally, this means that people remain sexually pure until they are married, and when married, they only have sex with their spouse.

Absolute Sexual Morality is a lot more than not having sex with the wrong partner. It is a lot more than “no spare keys” to your sexual organ. It also means that you direct all your sexual desire and feelings toward your spouse.  No seductive thoughts and behavior for anyone else.

I am very concerned about young men who are involved in pornography. Easy access on the Internet has made pornography a big problem. Pornography addiction makes it really difficult to establish a loving and sexually fulfilling relationship in a marriage. One of the leaders in our youth movement, CARP, said that she found that the older teenage boys with the strongest addictions to pornography started looking at pornography when they were 8 and nine years old.

Of course, at that age boys don’t have strong sexual feelings. But as they get older, hormones kick in, and if they masturbate looking at pictures, that delicious feeling becomes powerfully imprinted in their minds. Hormones bond them to that first sexual experience. They “fall in love” with sex.

They need to repeat the same kind of experience in order to feel sexually satisfied. This makes it really difficult to be sexually fulfilled with a wife. Several of the marriages of our Second Generation (children born into the movement through parents matched by Rev. Moon) have ended in divorce because the husband was addicted to pornography.

God intended for your first delicious sexual experience to be with your eternal spouse. Then you fall in love with the person who made you feel so wonderful. You won’t fall in love with “sex”, but with your spouse. Some kids think that if they don’t “go all the way” there won’t be any problem. But making out stirs up those same bonding hormones. And again, we fall in love with sex. This is why dating is not allowed in (the Unification Church) Absolute Sexual Morality.


God wants us to have tremendous joy in our love relationship with our spouse. The Absolute Sexual Morality is not a curse from God where he tells us “Don’t do this” or “Don’t do that.” Based on the way we are designed, Absolute Sexual Morality is actually a gift from Heavenly Father.

Practicing Absolute Sexual Morality can help us establish wonderful lasting marriages. So, please protect not only your body but your heart.

The sermon title today is “Don’t Doubt in the Dark, what God has spoken to you in the Light.” God speaks to us in many ways. He can speak to us through our feelings as he did with Steve. Or He can give us intuitions to go stand in a particular spot in a ballroom. Or He can give us powerful insights that help guide our lives. Some people hear God speak with an almost audible voice. God also speaks to us through other people.

God can speak through the most unlikely people. One time I was leading a fundraising team in Connecticut, and I couldn’t decide on the next area to go to. We were in a little town, and I pulled the van off the road and searched the map for our next area. I couldn’t decide and was becoming paralyzed by indecision.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of some movement outside my window. There was a drunk looking in at me. He had dirt and leaves in his hair, a scraggly beard, and his head wobbled around unsteadily.

His eyes were not focused. Carefully, I cracked my window to see what he wanted. I was shocked by what this drunk said to me. He slurred, “Just make a decision.”

Has God ever yelled at you through a drunk?

I hope that God will speak to you today. In the Bible, it is recorded that God spoke to a prophet through a donkey. Hopefully, He can use me to speak to you today. Two weeks ago, our second son, Daniel, called home from Australia. He is on the Oceania Leadership Team (OLT). He was calling to say he was flying to Fiji the next day. He would be leading a team for the next forty days. In a couple of emails he mentioned that he was having experiences with the heart of God. So, I asked him how God had spoken to him.

He shared how he was the team assistant for the past forty days. The team was fundraising, but his teammates were bad about getting out of the van to go fundraising. They would reach their drop off point, and spend a lot of time getting out. Daniel was trying to get them ready before reaching the drop off point. One day he thought he had everyone ready, but they were worse than ever. He got so angry with the team. He felt they were not concerned about the team, but were focused only on themselves.

Later that day, Daniel had a showdown prayer with God. Daniel realized that his being upset toward his team was a tiny taste of how God might feel towards His rebellious children. But more profoundly, Daniel realized that he himself had caused God to suffer, when Daniel was more focused on himself and his own schedule. Daniel repented deeply with tears. And in his tears he even found a more parental attitude toward his teammates.

Our movement (Unification Movement) has a number valuable programs for our young people. Programs like STF, OLT, and Jr. STF give our sons and daughters opportunities to put the Divine Principle into action. We are not called to just believe, but we are to mature our character. And that takes time, making good choices and practice.

I am really grateful to the OLT experience my son is having. We talked for nearly two hours. At the end of that Daniel told me how much he enjoyed talking with me. In the past, our conversations were rarely longer than a few minutes. Parents will understand what a joy it is to have a longer conversation with your child. I hope all of our youth can participate in programs like OLT and STF.

And parents, it is not enough to just come to church on Sunday. All of us need to mature our character. Spiritual maturity is not automatic. It takes intention, making good choices, and practice.

Our Bible reading today (above in Galatians) lists the qualities of spiritual maturity and good character. If we are in God’s Spirit we are to be loving, joyful, kind, patient, peaceful, self-controlled, and faithful. So, how does God produce these fruits of the Spirit in us?

If you want to be a loving person, do you think God will just “abracadabra” make you a loving person? No way? If God is trying to make you a loving person, do you think He will put people around you who are easy to love? No way? It doesn’t require much maturity to love people who are easy to get along with. To help you grow, God will put you in the exact opposite circumstance, where you have to make a choice, and practice loving. Then your character will mature.

Heavenly Father has each of us on a character education course. And this explains one aspect of the “Dark” mentioned in the title of our sermon. If God is maturing the quality of peacefulness in you, you might be thrown into the darkness of chaos. Or if God is maturing the quality of joyfulness in you, you might find yourself in the darkness of sorrow.

The key to growth is making the right choices. God gives us opportunities to mature our character. We can respond in fear and run away, or we can take a risk, and gain the victory. After winning smaller victories, God gives us opportunities for larger and larger victories.

King David didn’t just go out one day and slay Goliath. God gave him opportunities while tending sheep. David could have been afraid and run away, but he took the risk, and was victorious. Based on this small victory, God sent a lion to threaten the flock.

David could have been afraid and run away. But he took the risk, and got a bigger victory. Then God sent a bear to threaten the flock. David could have been afraid and run away. But again, he took the risk, and got an even bigger victory. Based on this training, God prepared David to face the giant Goliath. And in the end, David was ready to tend not only sheep, but all the Hebrew tribes.

I am sure that David had some failures. He probably lost some sheep. But he did not focus on his failures. He kept his victories foremost in his mind.

Have you ever bought a car and then the next day notice how many other cars have the same color as yours? The number of cars with the color of yours did not change overnight. But your mind was attuned to the new color, and began seeing more cars of the same color.

Your mind is a powerful tool. We tend to find what we are looking for.

When I was on MFT, I had a great time. Of course I faced rejection and physically it was hard work. But I focused on the joy I experienced with the last sale. That was what kept me going, and of course, the next sale always came.

One brother in our district came to me and said he was having trouble finding a job. He mentioned that the economy was tanking out, and he was being rejected everywhere he went. He was worried that he would be rejected again. He knew that with that attitude, he probably would be.

As we spoke, I was reminded of a story I heard about True Father (Reverend Moon) and one of the church businesses in Korea. The manager wanted to fire one of the older employees. But Father said the employee could not be fired. The manager said the old man was not producing and paying him was a waste of money. Then True Father explained that the old man was bringing God’s blessing to the company.

And this brings us to our conclusion. As God’s sons and daughters, YOU are bringing God’s blessing to your tribe, to your neighbors, and to your workplace. Have confidence that God wants to bring his Blessing to others through you. Build confidence by remembering your victories, and finally never forget, “Don’t Doubt in the Dark, What God Has Spoken to /you in the Light."

Return For Tomorrow's Post:  God Needs Liberation, Too



Don’t Doubt in the Dark, What God has Spoken to You in the Light

Tom Cutts

How to Witness to Others About God's Love

"Therefore, please live in love, serve in love, and set the tradition of love. Then you will leave behind the fruit of love and become the ancestor of love. Once you have planted this tradition and disseminated this love throughout the world, when you are lifted up to the spirit world, you will encounter no barriers and will be welcomed everywhere."

This section of the speech will have little meaning if one does not first understand that we are not living in the original world which God planned. Secondly, when one lives in spirit world, they may find they can not move around barriers based upon how we lived life on earth.  For instance, even though a person holds a high position in society or certain wealth, if their conscience was corrupted, once they enter the spirit world, the person themselves decides where they reside in spirit world. 

A corrupted being may find themselves in heaven, but will feel immense discomfort from their sins constantly being revealed.  Here on earth, wrongdoings can be covered and explained, but once we pass over, nothing is hidden - not even thought.  A corrupted mind will reside in a lower realm where there are entities similar to their sins.  So in that case, the tale of Dante's Inferno is quite accurate.  Therefore, it is not God who judges our spirit, but each person who places barriers around themselves and reside where their spirit is most comfortable.

Dr. Reverend Sun Myung Moon gave a speech to a roomful of his congregation at the estate in New York:


Lawful, Public Love

"We should be people of deep longings; we should enjoy every minute we spend with someone. When we care about others, we have no dull moments. Meeting others is the proper job for people of God. That should be what our life is about, we should become experts at meeting others.

Someone who comes to meet me at East Garden for the first time may plan to stay only half an hour, but he discovers it isn't so easy to leave. I never tell anyone not to go, but people just don't want to get up and leave. This is a result of the power of love that draws people to me.

People are supposed to long for and miss one another. If love depended on appearances, an ugly person would have a burdensome life. Therefore, God, who is the king of wisdom and justice, designed us to be lovers. When you are in love, nothing matters; ugliness is no concern; you can accept everything.

However, there is one important principle in matters of love. It should be a lawful, public love; that means unselfish love. True love is definitely public love. Through true love you can gain everything, even the spirit world. Since you cannot go alone to the spirit world, you need to go with your beloved. Therefore, a truly loving person can open up the spirit world.

Those of you who are engaged, raise your hands. Your engagement is unique. Many of you were engaged to a stranger. But even so, when you first looked at that stranger, you didn't hate him or her, did you? After looking at the stranger, you didn't want to go anywhere else. That is the spirit I live by at East Garden. I cherish everyone who comes to sit with me, considering each as my beloved."


The Secret of Home Church

When you meet people who you witness in your town which is called your home church, cherish them, too. Then no one will have to tell you to go and do home church. In the morning you will jump out of bed like a bullet and run to your home church because your beloved awaits you.

Perhaps you are supposed to go to the dining room in the morning, but your feet take you to your home church instead. When your beloved is waiting, you forget eating, sleeping, and everything else. Don't you like it when your feet head in the direction of your beloved? That is the way your original mind directs you.

Rev. Moon continues:

"This morning I am giving you another secret: how to do home church. When you consider the people in your home church as your beloved, cherishing them above your own fiancee, spouse, or children, you cannot help going there. And while you are with them, the spirit world will open up and communicate with you. This is the secret of doing home church.

You women, when you are married and your husband rises in the morning and says he must go to home church, will you complain and say, "You don't love me anymore! Why do you go away so early in the morning?"

This morning Mother couldn't join us because she is recuperating (from the birth of Jeung Jin Nim). I know that she definitely needs a time of rest and some special care. But in my true heart, I still wanted her to be here. So I told her that even though she was not capable of being here physically this morning, she would be here in heart, spiritually. The husband should try to charm his wife and win her heart, so that she will go everywhere with him and not want to be separated even momentarily. This is such a great feeling. There is nothing more valuable.

Dr. Durst is here today. As the national leader, he should long for and miss all the state leaders. He should meet with them, help them, and truly love them even if he collapses in the process. If such a love relationship is created between any national leader and the state leaders, the church in that land will boom and all of spirit world will open up.

When I came to pioneer the work in the United States in 1973, 1 knew no day or night. Every moment of the day was so precious to me. I always wanted to see one more person, visit one more center. I drove from one place to another, one meeting to the next. If you follow the same principle, your results will be greatly multiplied."

The Power of Love

"Everything is deeply interesting to me. I am a lover of the ocean because it is another of God's creations. That is why I go out to sea. When various national leaders, world leaders, Korean elders and itinerant workers come to East Garden, I keep waiting for them to ask me to take them out to sea. But so far none of them have done so!

Here is a photo of me standing beside a giant tuna I caught recently. This tuna weighs over 1,000 pounds. How could I become a champion tuna fisherman so quickly? I know how to attract tuna: I do it by love. Every minute of the day when I am on the ocean I stay alert; I never nap. When people go fishing they usually become tired.

Even the pilot of the boat sometimes sleeps, but I never lie down even for a minute on a boat. My eyes stay wide open because my interest is so intense. Even if a hundred boats are fishing for tuna, I know that no one loves the tuna more intensely than I do. Therefore, I know that the tuna will come. In Gloucester people say that I even brainwash tuna! Actually, it is not brainwashing, but love washing -- or maybe Moon washing.

During the matching (arranged marriage) the other night, 250 Japanese sisters came to the United States after a long plane ride. When they arrived at the World Mission Center, they set their bags down and came to see me with tears streaming down their faces. When I matched them, they accepted without question. All 250 were matched very quickly. The amazing thing is that, although 90 percent of them had never met me before, as soon as they saw me, tears of longing and joy burst from them. You saw it, didn't you?

Does that mean I am some kind of a magician or hypnotist? No. Something else was behind it; there is a definite reason why I affect so many people and move their hearts. It is the very thing I always talk about. The secret is to become a dynamo of love, become a lover. I look at people and even the whole world as my beloved. From the material point of view there is nothing special about me; but I am the richest person under the sun because I have that power to attract people. The secret is nothing other than love."

When we love people, we lay an important foundation.  We hear often that love hurts, or is fleeting.  This is not true, love never destroys and once enough has been built up, the blossom opens up, it only builds.

When each of you creates your own love foundation, bearing such a blossom of love, then God will become one with you. Flowers attract butterflies, and the butterflies drawn to your flower of love are none other than God and His angels. It may sound like something incredible and miraculous, but it can happen.

To make a long story short, you won't enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless you love people, miss them and yearn for them. We must learn to love the unlovable. 

Reverend Moon continues:

"Before I came to America, my major study was how to love American people. I had many plans, I did much homework, and I have precisely fulfilled all my pledges. There are many things you do not know, but one thing is for sure: after you met me, you became new men and women. You have changed. What power made that happen? The power of love."

  Fund Raising Through Love

As a Unification member, we learn quickly the value of training through seemingly normal activity.  The main two are witnessing the Divine Principle and fundraising.  Fundraising has been replaced with members owning businesses , but to have those experiences are invaluable to becoming humble to the word of God, following Him in faith and learning how to love anybody.

My fundraising experiences for a duration of two years would take up many books to explain.  I went from a spoiled upper middle class rich girl to a girl in unknown cities asking people in streets and inside stores for money for the cause.  Become the position of a beggar and then you will be able to save such a person.


It was quite humbling to first of take 10 hours of my time for no outward return for my efforts, living for other people's sake.   Through these experiences, I learned to love people I used to avoid or ignore and pray for those who cursed me...eventually. 

As Americans we do not really know how selfish of a country we have become until we begin to look outside ourselves and into the eyes of our less fortunate brothers and sisters beside us.  It was through these very humbling poor situations of fundraising that I learned the to trust God more to direct my life and to love just about anyone.  I am not there yet, but compared to the person I was seven years ago before I joined, I have turned from the path of hate and death in which I was walking to life living fully being led by God.

"When you go out and work hard, you do it out of love for me. When you fund raise, for example, you think, "I really want to do my utmost for Father." That is your motivation. Then whoever gives you a donation receives the benefit of that love.

I have met some Koreans here in the United States who are well known in their community. One of them said, "Many Unification Church members have stopped me on the street or knocked at my door asking me to donate for some fund raising item, and I always do. I never refuse them." I wondered how much they were contributing, but I didn't ask. They reported their donation to me as though they had done something very important and were some kind of hero. Love is at work when people feel such an urge to help your fundraising.

"Wherever a perfect plus is found, a perfect minus appears. If you are a perfect plus, you can sit in the middle of a village doing nothing, and the villagers will come to you automatically."

I want you to understand that you are in a position to disseminate this pure love. This love will affect other people and benefit them. When you get donations, every penny is spent for the sake of mankind, for the sake of the world, and for the sake of God. How wonderful that is! Both you and the people who give will benefit. When your position is one of true love, you want to keep giving until the very end.

I would like to borrow as much money as possible in order to be able to give. For the sake of love, I want to be the most indebted person under the sun. When I live by such a philosophy, even the seemingly insurmountable obstacles can somehow be completely overcome. As I meet each large obstacle, I can jump over it.

When I make plans, the difficulties ahead seem to be overwhelming but solutions come from totally unexpected places. Spirit world moves in entirely new ways. If money is needed, money comes; if people are needed, people come; the more money we commit to a certain project, the more resources come our way. When I act, spirit world mobilizes masses of people.

Therefore, fund raising is a sacred responsibility. When you fundraise, you are giving love both ways: love for True Parents (Rev. Moon consider he and his wife as representatives of restored Adam and Eve, restored original parents without the fall) and love for people. You knock on people's doors not to gain money from them but because you love each person.

In a way, God, too, is a fundraiser. When you knock on doors, you are rejected 90 percent of the time. Likewise, when God tries to pour out His love to you, you reject Him 99 percent of the time. So when you experience rejection while fundraising, you can be in a position to comfort God. When you have tearful experiences, you move God's heart and comfort Him. Then universal love begins to blossom in your heart. The blossom of love is the most sacred and noble kind of flower.

Without question, I am a superb fundraiser. I never do things just for myself; when I see a need and set the goal for meeting that need, I fundraise very boldly. You must be bold for the sake of the nation and the world. I can tell people, 'You don't have to give me anything. Just loan me the money. You can trust me because you know my motivation is correct. Therefore, I ask that you please lend me a large amount of money, not just a small amount.'

I had one experience when I was studying in Tokyo during my younger days that illustrates this. I needed to return to Seoul, Korea, which involved a long trip by train and boat and was rather expensive. I didn't have a wallet or any money that day, but at the Tokyo train station I met a very noble-looking woman, a total stranger, and began telling her who I was, where I was going, and how much money I needed, which was quite a bit.

Then I asked if she would have enough faith in me to lend me the money. I was so sincere that the noble woman trusted me enough to lend me the money without asking for a receipt. After I completed the trip, I sent her back twice the amount of money she lent me. She was flabbergasted. She paid me a visit to return the money, saying, 'You are such a good, honest man. I do not want this much money from you. Please take it back.' 

People can sense a person of genuine character; purity and genuineness are always communicated. That is the beauty of life. Fundraising is the best way to understand this kind of realm.


Fundraising Teaches How to Love People

When I was a university student in Tokyo, I would ride the electric tram car on rainy days. When I boarded, I looked for the elderly people and stood next to them. Normally, young people wouldn't like to stand close to shabby-looking old people, but I would. I wanted to stand near them in case they needed any help. I would look at some bedraggled old man and think, 'Suppose this gentleman was my father. What would I do if my father was this wet? Could I run away and abandon him?'

It is normal to feel repelled by smelly old women or men, but when I thought of myself as their son, everything about them became attractive, and I felt very affectionate toward them. Old people have a loving heart for their children, and on such occasions I wanted to reciprocate that love. So I would talk very warmly to an old woman, even though she was a total stranger. What beauty there is in such an intimate conversation!

Sometimes I would wear dirty, ragged working clothes and a smelly jacket on the tram car. I would try to sit next to the most attractive woman on board, someone wearing eye makeup, lipstick and manicured nails.

Ten times out of ten, such women would move away. I was hoping to find someone who would ask herself, "What if this were my husband and he was working so hard for me? If he was suffering for my sake, what would I do?" Then, while these thoughts were going through her mind, we could have started speaking and she could have become the first person to hear the Principle and the first person to join the Unification Church."

Return for Tomorrow's Post: How To Gain Spiritual Help


This text came from Textbook: Restoration of True Love, Chapter 10 Before and After the Blessing

Why Arranged Marriages Work

The movie below is an endearing movie about an arranged marriage during World War II that is realistic.  It gives an example of how two strangers who are committed to one another can fall in love after marriage. The interview that follows was featured on the Unification website recently because the teachings which this blog is based on supports arranged marriages.  I have personally known hundreds of individuals who have arranged marrriages that are American and live in America and have lasted over 20 to 30 years.  What I found personally is that when two people, even with different backgrounds, have the same goals, values and wants for the future, they will sacrfice their selfish needs for the whole - their family.  Unification Thought and the Divine Principle which is discussed throughout this blog teaches that individuals should live for the family and family lives for the sake of the society and society for the nation which will lead to world peace.  Instead, humanity chose to live for its own sake and chose their own brides and the world went in the opposite direction.  An arranged marriage is the ultimate sacrifice for an individual's next step, as it is solely done for the sake of their future family.  How many of us have made the wrong choices in relationships and keep going to another.  Wouldn't it be nice if we could take a step back from what an individual places in front of us as great and see all sides of this person, and put on the table what they bring to the relationship beyond good looks?  Who does that - who has the time to evaluate someone before they delve into a deep relationship or even marriage?  With divorce so easily accepted, we have gone from a society that lives for their children to people who will try someone out and divorce if it doesn't go the way they thought.  What does this have to do with world peace?  World peace starts with one person who learns love through family interactions.  The world is not made up of land, the society isn't made up of buildings, it is made up of people.  Families.  Just look at the beginning.  The whole world came to ruin by the very first parents and sons on earth.  There was infidelity and murder in the first of God's children set on earth.  To turn it around, God needs families to live for one another beyond selfish interest of a spouse that looks good.  The following interview gives insight into why more Americans are deciding to take this route through their religions and new traditions such as the Unification Church and the Mormons. It speaks about the science of love and how love can happen after marriage to create a strong bond.  Also, the studies conducted on love marriages and arranged marriages and how love grew or faded over time.

Dr. Robert Epstein Jack LaValley LaValley: Welcome, Dr. Epstein. I was very inspired to learn that you were exploring ways in which love can arise outside of romantic relationships, with which westerners are mostly involved. I myself was involved in an arranged marriage, and I happen to believe that the principles and insights within the culture of arranged marriages can make a significant contribution to people who want to be successful in their relationships. So, when I found your research about arranged marriages combined with your behavioral studies, studying how people can learn how to love, I felt the call to reach out to you and have an opportunity to learn from your research, which could really help people at this time. I want to start with the “science” part. Through the research that you’ve done, you say that science can help us fall in love. Could you tell us what you mean by that? Dr. Epstein: I mean two different things. As a scientist, I have been studying how love arises in arranged marriages, and I’ve been trying to figure out how that happens. It doesn’t happen in every arranged marriage, but it happens. Sometimes people are very conscious of wanting to build love over time. In Indian culture for example, they say, “First comes marriage, then comes love.” So, there is a consciousness there that it is possible to build love. I’ve been studying this by interviewing people in arranged marriages, having them fill out certain forms and analyzing the data. The other part is that for decades western researchers have been studying processes in which emotional bonds are created. In the laboratory, you can actually get two total strangers to suddenly like each other or even love each other in just a few minutes by putting them through various exercises. We don’t have to leave our love lives entirely to chance. We can do A and B all the way up to Z and be very deliberate about building love in our relationships. There’s a huge advantage to figuring this out, because this means that there’s a possibility for us in the West, for the first time in hundreds of years, to actually get together with someone who’s suitable for us and build love over time with that person. LaValley: I’m sure everybody wants to make the right choice and have it work out the first time. You said that in various exercises and activities people were able to experience feelings of love. Could you give us a couple examples of what happened and how that manifested? Dr. Epstein: I did a course a few years ago at the University of California in San Diego that was on this topic, and I thought it would be fun for the students to see how this process of deliberately building love works. So, I would bring people up to the front of the room in pairs or I would ask people in the audience to turn to their neighbor and do the exercises. In every exercise I asked the students, “On a scale of one to ten, how much do you like this person, how much do you love this person, how much are you attracted to this person, how close do you feel to this person?” We’d get the numbers before we’d do the exercise, then after the exercise. The results were just spectacular. The simplest exercise of all, I called “soul-gazing.” You simply look very deeply into the person’s eyes and you try to look past the flesh, deep into the person’s soul. Doing that for just two minutes dramatically increases the four measures of emotional bonding. You can actually get people to feel much closer to someone in just two minutes. So that’s the simplest of the exercises. You can get bigger results with other exercises. LaValley: Did any of the students in the exercise fall in love with each other and get married? [Laugh] R: I didn’t really track that for this particular course, but it turns out that in the published literature on this topic, the very first couple [that participated in such an experiment] by this researcher named Arthur Aaron fell in love and got married. So I have no doubt that I created a lot of deep, long-term relationships in that course. LaValley: That’s very interesting. You mention in your study of arranged marriages cases in which love has grown over time. You mentioned a few elements you found. Could you talk about those? The Power of Commitment Dr. Epstein: I’ve done two studies now on people in arranged marriages. In the first one, I ask them open-ended questions just to get them to talk. This was an exploratory study on my part; no one’s ever looked at how love arises in arranged marriages. We do know that when it does arise it might even be more stable than the kind of love that emerges in love marriages. There’s a very interesting study done in India comparing the love in “love” marriages to the love in arranged marriages that found something quite spectacular. In the love marriages, there’s a lot of love at first, but then it weakens over time. In arranged marriages, there’s not that much love at first, but it tends to grow over time, and it surpasses the love in the love marriages about five years out. Ten years out it’s twice as strong. So, in my first study I simply ask people in arranged marriages, “How much did you love your spouse when you got married? How much do you love him or her now? What do you think happened that made the love grow?” The second study is more rigorous and is mainly conducted online at a website called arrangedmarriagesurvey.com. In this study we’re comparing 36 different factors that might contribute to the growth of love over time. In both studies, the biggest result or insight we got was that commitment is a factor that seems most responsible for the growth of love. That has to mean real commitment, not the kind we so often make in our marriages here, almost as if we’re keeping our fingers crossed behind our backs. Real commitment meaning, “I’m really going to be with you through thick and thin, through sickness and in health.” This has led me to develop a theory called the Vulnerability Theory of Emotional Bonding. These factors make people feel vulnerable to the other person and two people feeling vulnerable at the same time brings them together. So the reason commitment is so powerful in creating an emotional bond is because it’s the ultimate expression of vulnerability. When you make a strong commitment to be with someone no matter what, what you’re saying is, “I am entirely vulnerable to you. No matter what is happening, I will be there for you.” And if two people are making that kind of expression of commitment to each other, that brings people very close, and if they each live up to the commitment, that brings them even closer over time. I was interviewing a highly-educated woman from Pakistan and I said to her, “On a scale of one to ten, where one is the lowest and ten is the highest, how in love were you with your husband the day you got married?” She said, “Zero.” I asked, “How in love are you with him now?” and she said, “Eleven.” I asked, “How long have you been married?” and she said, “45 years.” Keeping Expectations Realistic LaValley: I want to flesh this out a little more. People go before a priest or rabbi or minister and read the vows that explicitly state, “Through sickness and in health, for better or for worse,” but do they actually not know how to make the commitment? Do people not know what that means when they enter into marriage and utter those words? Dr. Epstein: Close to 50 percent of first marriages fail. Two thirds of second marriages fail, and almost three-quarters of third marriages fail. Practice doesn’t help us, apparently. You have to realize that when people utter those words, they actually mean them – at the moment. Generally speaking, people have high hopes when they’re going into it. Where it all falls apart is in regards to expectations that people have in marriages. The notion that we get from movies and fairytales and novels say that love lasts forever, that the person you marry is the one, your soul mate and that you live happily ever after. We have the notion that the good feelings will continue. All those expectations are wrong. People I’ve interviewed in arranged marriages laugh at us, because we’re so naïve about what happens over time in a relationship. We go in with very unrealistic expectations and in a few years we’re disappointed, our expectations have not been met, and we often say, “I made a mistake, and you’re just the wrong person.” We wake up one day and we say, “Who are you?” or “You’ve changed.” And that’s all nonsense. First of all, if we went in with the realistic expectation that we actually have to do some work to keep the relationship going and make it strong over time, that would help a lot. The other issue is that we’re so blinded with love at first, we really don’t know the person we’re marrying. The strong emotions that we have sometimes make us blind to the characteristics of our partner. LaValley: Arranged marriages usually take place in religious environments, with people of the same faith, and they know that they’re going to get married because they want to have children, they expect love to grow in the family context and they’re often not overly fantasizing about what it’s all supposed to look like. They’re more practical and down to earth in some respect. Dr. Epstein: I agree completely. They have much more realistic expectations heading into it. Very often, because they’re immersed in a certain community, they have role models around them. Sometimes the parents are in successful arranged marriages themselves. And they have the support from that religious community or cultural niche that they’re in. So, there are a lot of factors regarding why they’re almost certainly going to do better than love marriages. [One survey said that] in India, roughly 90 percent of the people were arranged, and the country had one of the lowest divorce rates in the world, even though divorce was legal there. I do not believe that in the U.S. we’re ready to embrace arranged marriage, but I do think we can learn a lot from what happens in successful arranged marriages. Marriage: An Adventure in Getting To Know Each Other LaValley: You say in the West we fail partly because we enter into relationships with poor skills for maintaining them, and we have highly unrealistic expectations. We pick unsuitable partners, mistakenly believing that we are “in love” simply because we feel physical attraction. In a way it seems almost to be a cruel trick of nature. Without these chemicals’ beings released and these euphoric highs, many people wouldn’t feel attracted to begin with, but when they do, they want to bond. But what you’re saying is that’s essentially part of the problem. Dr. Epstein: It does seem like cruel trick. Here’s this person that makes butterflies in your stomach and that person’s not a good partner for you. Those butterflies mislead you. I spent several years developing a test of compatibility; it’s online now at areyougoodtogether.com. It’s the most comprehensive compatibility test that’s ever been developed and it’s possible for two people who like each other or are in love to take the test. I’ve taken it with my wife, with four ex-girlfriends, and it’s very illuminating, because it shows you where your partner does and does not meet your most important relationship needs. It gets things right on the table, right up front, right now. Sometimes you’re with the wrong person, sometimes you’re with someone with potential but there are road blocks. You have to make a plan and fight the demons that might destroy your relationship. LaValley: But that requires a certain level of maturity and consciousness where both partners can actually sit down and have that sort of give and take. I think that goes back to how two people who are in love with each other go about making a commitment. You said it’s more than just uttering the words at the altar. There needs to be time spent beforehand getting to know each other. Dr. Epstein: Yes, but also the recognition that when you make a marriage commitment, that process of getting to know the person is going to continue. You have to understand that people keep changing, people are very complex, and that process is going to continue. For one couple I had in my study, one reason their love is developing over time is because they’re committed to getting to know each other. That’s partly what their marriage has been – an adventure in getting to know each other. And I really like that image. Again, we have these illusions that we’re in love because we know the other person. That’s simply not true. There’s actually laboratory research about people who are deeply in love and who are blind to the very important characteristics of the other person. LaValley: Speaking for myself, it’s harder for me to know me. Dr. Epstein: Exactly. That’s so well put. Over the course of our own lives we’re learning about ourselves. Eastern Practices vs. Western Practices LaValley: Some authors and researchers talk about this primary fantasy many people have, and if they’re not able to get beyond that fantasy, as you were saying earlier, it’s very likely that the relationship will go through hard times. [The primary fantasy is a term that refers to the idea that there will be a certain type of person who will magically appear in one’s life with whom the subject will fall in love and remain in love forever.] Dr. Epstein: But I think there are solutions here to these problems. If you think back to the 1950s, 1960s, generally speaking, we knew nothing about eastern methods of meditation and yoga and tai chi, and so we had very limited ways in which we could work on our wellbeing and peace of mind. One of the main ways was drinking alcohol, actually – we had few, positive, constructive ways of altering our wellbeing. But groups like the Beatles and the Beach Boys brought pieces of eastern culture into western culture, wonderful techniques for creating a sense of wellbeing. We didn’t adopt the religion, the culture – we adopted the practices. I think we can learn from successful arranged marriages and adopt the practices. We can use our heads a little bit more, looking beyond just the physical characteristics, and then we can develop skills and an awareness that can help us not only keep love going but also make love deeper over time. LaValley: I completely support that perspective. I want the romanticism that involves men and women coming together in love, and I also want it to be deeply rooted, so it’s able to grow over time. My wife and I entered into our relationship with shared expectations, similar values and compatible world views. Some of these insights and lessons that arranged marriages can teach us are deeply embedded within the cultural context that’s still very unfamiliar to westerners. But I think pulling those things out and putting them in a way that people can get their heads around can really benefit the enterprise of marriage significantly. Dr. Epstein: I feel very strongly that this can be done, and I have found some ways to get the word out. In 2010, Maria Shriver invited me to be one of the speakers at a conference of 14,000 women. Michelle Obama spoke there and so did Oprah Winfrey. Maria herself entitled my talk “It’s Time To Take Control Over Your Love Life.” I focused on what I call the “last form of empowerment for women,” because women have made a lot of progress in education and in the work domain, but still are victims to fairytales and fantasies that end up hurting them and their families. I asked the women to believe in a better fantasy, which is that you can take control over your love life, you can be with someone you’re compatible with, and the two of you can build love that will actually get stronger over the years. I become more convinced over the years that this can be done, and it would help millions of people create a stability that we have lacked for many decades. LaValley: I resonate with that because in my case, it was a choice. I chose to love the woman I’m currently with. Dr. Epstein: That very strong commitment you made, which was the commitment to open your heart, is a choice people can make. We’ve got to increase that awareness and give people the tools that they need so they can do what you have done, and what millions of people do, because most marriages around the world are still arranged. We have to use our heads more than we have been using, not just our heart and certainly not just our reproductive organs. We have to be a little more conscious of who it is we’re getting together with, and we have to be a little more realistic about what’s going to happen in the future. We have to be open to the idea that we can take control over what happened, that we can not only be in love but that we can build love, make love stronger over time. Dr. Epstein’s website can be found at: drrobertepstein.com Return For Tomorrow's Post: Why Doesn't God End Evil? Robert Epstein, former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today and a Ph.D. in psychology of Harvard University, exchanges ideas on the topic of arranged marriages with Jack LaValley, founder of true4ever, an information-based business that helps men and women learn how to create romantic partnerships that grow in love and intimacy over a lifetime. Dr. Epstein is the authorof Teen 2.0: Saving Our Children and Families from the Torment of Adolescence; The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen; and The Big Book of Creativity Games: Quick, Fun Activities for Jumpstarting Innovation.