New Hope - Twelve Talks of Reverend Sun Myung Moon

Way of Life

Each of you as an individual is born and raised in the love of your parents. You go through kindergarten, primary school, high school and the university, and eventually your view of life is broadened to a wider scope. You want to see what the society is like and what the people around you are doing. You find yourself belonging to one of the many nations of the world. You will want your nation to prosper more than any other nation. You want to be successful, and you become interested in the opposite s ex. You want to have a sweetheart, and you desire to get married to that person and build a home of your own. You want to give birth to your children, and in the parent's position you want to educate them as your parents have educated you. In order to raise your family you must have a job. To most people, success means to be able to make more money for the happiness of their family. In this way you grow old.

In the worldly sense, there are happy and unhappy people. Some are unhappy because they have no children, and some are unhappy because their families are being broken up. Still others are unhappy because they have been discharged from a high position or because of the bankruptcy of their company. Kings, presidents and other responsible officials in each nation feel unhappy when their country is defeated by other countries. We can well see that in the world there are people who are happy, but there are more people who are unhappy. There is not a single man in the whole world who would choose to have unhappiness or misery; everyone wants happiness. However, some things are not within our reach. We cannot always do what we would like.

In the United States people are seemingly happy and have an abundance of everything, but in their hearts there usually is unhappiness too. To a certain extent, the people of the United States have been happy and blessed, but when one experiences misery after having had happiness, one feels even more miserable. Suppose a certain couple seems very happy. Inwardly, they may be very unhappy. In homes, especially, there is often a breakdown. You may be successful in your worldly career, but that can become a failure in the next moment.

What is happiness in the true sense? In a word, happiness can be found in the position where we have things which other people do not possess. You are elevated, elated; you are happy when you can give to other people. You are happy when you can enjoy a position higher than other people's. By giving and taking with other people, you feel happy. On the other hand, if you cannot give out to others, they cannot receive, and they feel unhappy. You are happy when you can give things to other people, when you can share the position, wealth, knowledge, and whatever you have that is virtuous with other people. If you are satisfied with what you are, with the position and everything else you have, then you can call yourself "happy." If you can share love wit h each other, that makes you feel happiest of all.

Comparing yourself with successful people, you often ask yourself, "Can I be that way? Can I ever be that kind of person?" You find yourself limited by your knowledge, your position, your authority, and many other things; but your desire and ambition have no limit. When you have limitless desire and limited circumstances, how can you find the balance between those two? This is what gives all of us agony. Thus, we find there is only a small difference between the commoner and the prince. Everyone has to solve this problem.

There seems to be no solution. That's why people look for the key in philosophy and religion. In philosophy you search outwardly, and in religion, you look for the key inwardly, or spiritually. Motivated in this way, people have developed philosophy an d religion, and today we experience the maturity of this history of search. In the external sense, in the political philosophy of democracy, freedom-loving people have grown to a certain level in their cultural tradition. On the other hand, Communism ha s been growing strong and opposes democratic ideology. People are struggling to find the more righteous one of the two ideologies. In the midst of struggle, the religious world is holding the mainstream of thought, and it cannot be overcome by the opposing power.

The struggle between democracy and Communism will end in two possible ways: either one of them will absorb the other, or both, exhausted, will diminish and perish and a third philosophy will arise. We are now living in the age that will see the outcome. Democracy and Communism have long struggled; they are both tired, and they are talking of détente, peaceful coexistence. They both say that their people are going to enjoy real freedom and peace, and we will all eventually be settled in the peace they proclaim. If they fail to fulfill their promises, some new ideology will arise that will deny all the "isms" and ideologies that have existed. Then everything of the past must be denied. This is because the already-established system of family, society, nation, and everything else will have been tested and proved a failure. So we will have to deny and remove all those things and change the system or tradition.

Since everything would have been tested and have failed, some people would feel free to live just as they please without any restrictions. That group is what we call "hippies." They don't want to work. They wear ragged clothing, and even inside out or backwards. They may do anything, acting as though they are the guests of society. The ordinary people around them are helpless; they cannot change these people. The society does not know how to respond. If their parents warn them against their way of life, they protest against their parents and ask, "What do you have that is better than what we have? " They demand of the older generation: "What have you done for us? The society is corrupted and you are still advocating the tradition and culture you have built, but it is rotten and decayed. What have you better than what we have?" This group can make the foundation for another group to come to deny the world and society. This happens to be the world situation today, and society cannot blame those people for protesting. Almost all of them are inclined to continue their way.

Our standards of what the family, nation and community should be are all broken down. There is only darkness, and we have no idea what direction to take or how to evaluate things. We are faced with the ruin of our view of value. In the former days we esteemed love in marriage and in the family, but now love has fallen far below the standard of past tradition. In the democratic world people say even of their leaders, "Well, he is just another man, no different from myself." Everything of virtue has bee n leveled. There remains no high view of life for future generations to pursue. But still we cannot abandon our human ambition and desire.

Of the two powers, shall we follow democracy and the United States, or shall we follow the Communist world and respect the Soviets and other Communist powers? Is there any religion in which we have not been disappointed? People have become disillusioned by all of these. Democracy, Communism, and even religion have failed people. They feel that now everything has been tested and all have failed. We have come at last to this point on the way of life. Now what should we do?

There is natural law ruling in human society. We cannot change our sexes. Men must remain men, and women must remain women. Their natures and desires are different. But what do they have in common? They have the desire to enjoy something virtuous. However far-ranging our human thought, or however varied life around the world may be, we must be set truly on one common goal. We have got to find the ultimate goal which both man and woman are headed for. If we find that goal, we will be the happiest people. People may think that happiness is something that we only wish for, but which can never be attained. Who can give us happiness? Can our nation give us happiness? Can any ideology or "ism" bring us happiness? We can only be scornful of past ideologies which promised to do so.

When you are born in a small country, you feel so limited, and you dream of coming out of that country to the United States. But when you come here, you don't find so much difference from your own nation. Even though there is tremendous wealth here, eve n though dreams are realized here, you are not going to be contented. You will want to go further. In the world, people are not contented with what they now enjoy. Their missions and desires are always far ahead of them. Isn't that true? That means t hat what we already have is not the ultimate happiness.

A boy may want to marry a girl and at one point that is the goal. After it is attained, are the two happy? No. They want to have something more. They have learned about each other, and not so much remains there now. Real happiness is something that we can never exhaust, something we can enjoy forever.

So what is the source of such happiness? Can any individual be the source of happiness? Can another person give everlasting happiness to you? After thinking about it, we can come to the conclusion that if there were no God, we would have to create one. We must have God at least in our imaginations. Even though we might be deceiving ourselves, if we had that God in our imaginations, and if by serving Him we felt that we were given ultimate happiness by Him, then we would be happy. Because no other human being can give us that. We have got to have God transcendent of human life, or life has no meaning. At this point, if we discover that God really does exist, how happy we must be! We should feel as if we could turn the whole world upside down. If a group of people can really know God and work in the love of God and for the cause of God, society will be attracted to that group and will watch it and be anxious to see the group successful. We have to put this into practice, and we are happy to carry out our mission.

People of the world go to school and get married, and they seek position and status; but they are never satisfied. Here we know God is above us, leading us and working through us. So everything we do is very meaningful to us, and what we say and what we do is of higher dimension than what others are saying and doing. People generally are doing things that have limited scope. But we are doing things without limitation. We have a super-existence above us - God, our Father. So we do everything in accordance with His will. We eat and sleep for the great task which He would have us do. We always seek to act in accordance with God's will; that is our standard. We marry to bring the family, society and nation into accordance with God's will. We marry because we want to come closer to God. We do everything because we want to be near Him. We want to restore the family, the nation and the whole world because we know that by winning these things back to God, we as individuals can come closer to God. We Want to go to a meeting point with God, where we can reach Him and win Him for ourselves.

In the external world, the ideologies of democracy and Communism have been struggling for so long. They are both so worn out that people don't know which one they belong to. But in the world of higher dimension, the more we struggle the more valuable the achievement. In the love of God we will enjoy everlasting happiness. So it is only too natural for us to reach the conclusion that we can attain the goal of human happiness in a higher dimension, and that it will last forever. Since learning about Go d we are strong and happy people. We know only too well that God is love and that we will enjoy God's love in doing everything. In going through education and enjoying even high positions and wealth, we know how to return all things to God, and we can enjoy things as having been given by God, our Father. Compared with all people we are the happiest. That's what makes us happy. We said that when people possess things other people do not, they feel happy. Since we possess things of greater value, we a re happy.

In giving, too, we must not be narrow-minded; we will not draw small circles around ourselves. We must be generous people. We want to give out things not only to our family members, but to friends and neighbors and the society around us. We want to give out not only things, but our whole being to the last man alive, stretching ourselves until we can reach the other end of the world. There is no limitation according to East and West in our life. Nations which have long been enemies can come together in our movement and love each other. We can enjoy things among ourselves, sharing with each other what we have cherished. Since there is no barrier whatsoever, there are no enemies whatsoever; we can safely say that we are the happiest people. In human society some people want to possess more than other people, and they want to invade others' ownership to possess more people, more land, and so on. That's what makes people fight each other. But here there is no such thing. If you want to possess things with self-centered motive, we know you are liable to ruin.

Here we say that everything belongs to God. Only God owns everything. What we have belongs to God. We feel that we have to return everything first to God and then be given what we need by Him. In that way, we exchange what we have with God's love. We want to return to God everything we have, and in return we want to receive God's love, which is greater than anything else. Then we want to share that love with others.

Husband and wife are proud of the love between them. The man is not proud because of the build of his body, and the woman is not proud because of her femininity, but they are both proud of there being love between them. The family, as a unit, cannot be proud of its wealth or position. It can only be proud of the love of God abiding within the family. Neighbors, relatives and friends will be envious of the family that really enjoys the love of God. Such a couple says to God, "We will return everything to you: What we have is yours - our family, our children, our nation, and everything is yours. In return we want to have your love. In your love of the family, we will love our family; and in your love of the nation we will love our nation; and in your love of people of the world, we are ready to love the people of the world." What we want to do next is to return the whole cosmos, the whole spirit world, to God and receive God's infinite love. What we are doing here is for the sake of God. We eat for God's cause, we work and do things and say things all for God's sake, and to receive God's love.

In love your trials and your struggles are not painful. Suppose there is a girl who wants to marry a very handsome man, a righteous man. She could sit up the whole night embroidering something which would please her future husband. She would never feel fatigued no matter what long hours she worked. When you work for the love of God, you cannot be made to feel tired. Therefore, however hard we have to toil and labor, we are happy to do it. This is the secret to possess love. The more you labor for the person you love, the more love you will receive from him.

You are working for the accomplishment of a great task. But here in the United States, people are not calling you. You have to knock at the door, and people are still sleeping. You have to wake them up and persuade them also to work for the great cause . That is your mission. People may be reluctant to receive your message, and they may even send you away. But afterwards, when they are really awakened to the fact that they can be brought into the life of vast dimension, they will be very grateful to you. When you knock at the doors of those people, you will have brought to them the love of God. Even though you leave their house, they will have been touched and moved by what you have said. Later on, they will come to you in gratitude. You must be aware of the fact that this is our great task, and you must carry out your mission in thankfulness to God.

Love is something precious that you want to keep deep inside yourself like a secret. This secret between you and God will make you great. In giving out the love of God to other people you are sharing your love with them, and your love rather than being diminished, will be multiplied. You will be proud of what you have given. Only by giving can we receive. So we want to give out our whole being. We want to give out our family, our clan, our nation, and our whole world to God. In return He will fill our hearts with such love that can embrace the whole world and the whole cosmos. We are rich; we are the happiest people. Then, are you going to be really generous givers? In giving to others, never expect to receive anything directly in return from them. But let them return what they have received, to God. You are returning everything to God through those people, so God will be sure to return something to you. That something is His love, which is greater than anything else in the world. You will receive things of more value than those you have given out. Through the love of God you will be in the position of God's son or daughter.

Now that you have learned the way to go in life, the more you labor for the love of God, the more you can receive love from Him in abundance. When we live in God's love, we have nothing to be afraid of. If you know that you have been doing all things for the sake of God, you are not afraid of being caught in any kind of disaster, because you know that God will keep you and protect you. If you are sacrificed in carrying out your mission because of your love for God, you will be a martyr who will long be remembered in the history of the providence of God. In the Roman Empire when Christians were persecuted and martyred, they suffered for the sake of the spiritual kingdom they expected to enjoy when they died. With the thought that they wanted to go to the heavenly kingdom of God, they endured martyrdom.

But in this world we are going through all difficulties and hardships and persecutions in order to build the kingdom of God on this planet while we are still alive. Even though we may have to be martyred here, we are struggling for the love of God. We a re going to be the children of God. Knowing this, you must carry out your mission with gratitude and you must return joy to God.