Searching After True Parents - Searching After True Love

Sun Myung Moon
December 7, 1980

People want to be proud of something about themselves, whatever it may be. A person is proud of his position, because then people are bound to respect him. But what kind of position can we be eternally proud of? One cannot be a teacher for his whole lifetime, for instance, and neither can one be president of the United States throughout his life. All these positions are temporary, so what is really valuable?

The profession of parent is eternal. From the moment parents give birth, they continue to carry out their responsibility, giving care and instructions to their children. Even if they are abandoned by their children, parents are always concerned about their well-being.

Even though parents may not live a completely good life, when they speak to their children they want to say the very best things. Even if they scold or spank their children, their motive is goodness. They would never try to make their children evil; even a murderer wants to say saintly things to his own children.

Parents are always preoccupied about relieving any suffering their children might go through; they would rather take it upon themselves. Parents get tremendous satisfaction seeing their children study hard, and they want to stay up late and support them. The parents' utmost care is for their children's well-being. Even when they are alone in their room, their first concern is how their children are faring.

Furthermore, parents never cease praying for their children, for parents always want them to be the very best. Even if their children are so dumb that they have no chance of achieving anything, still parents have dreams for them!

Parental feeling never changes, but remains permanently. You may change mood even 12 times a day, but you should have some unchanging quality within you. If everything is always temporary in your life, how unhappy you must be! Your thoughts may be fleeting, but parental love surrounds you permanently.

Parents are the most precious beings for us and their love cannot be bought for any amount of money or swapped for the love of teachers or friends. Your parents should be closer to you than your husband or wife, your teachers or your friends.

When your lover betrays you, you want revenge. But how do parents feel when their child betrays them? You feel hurt and anguished when your lover betrays you, but your parents feel even more pain when they are betrayed by their child. Men and women can renew a relationship with another person, but parents cannot start another relationship with other children.

As a rule, American women do not want to serve their elderly in-laws or marry into a home with that kind of obligation. They think all they need is a husband who will take care of them. But when you see your parents-in-laws' aged hands and faces, you should think that they have grown old giving their best to their children (including your husband). Old parents want to stay with their children, but if the daughter-in- law wants them to remain home and babysit while she and her husband go out, she has the wrong attitude and hurts the heart of the mother.

Do old people really want to be surrounded by other old people, or would they rather live with their children and grandchildren? Even if the senior citizens' residence were as rich as a palace, the old people would rather be with their own families, regardless of whether the home was so poor that only one meal a day could be served. We have to have a crusade to get rid of senior citizens' homes.

It is human nature to want to be welcomed, received well and respected. Who would be in the central position representing the past and applauding you? Your parents. Parents are your cheerleaders, always ready to applaud you; then those around them will join in. All history will judge you according to whether you have been good sons and daughters of piety. Parents stand right behind you, and beyond them your ancestors and all of spirit world, as well as God, are ready to respond as your parents respond. History is always ready to praise sons and daughters who give utmost loyalty to their parents.

The past will applaud you when you become pious children. The present age will laud husbands and wives who are exemplary as a couple in serving society. Husband and wife are the cornerstone of society, so when they are genuinely united, society will praise them. When your parents and ancestors (representing God) support you, when people approve of you as a good husband or wife, and when your relationship is as unique and unchanging as parental love -- then society will applaud you.

How will the future applaud you? Generations to come will praise you when you have lived unselfishly as a true patriot. Patriotism consists, not of oratory but of love. You are not a patriot if you only absorb knowledge or just work hard day and night. Being a patriot is determined by the love you give your country.

The lives of men and women revolve around searching after love. Men search after women, women search after men, and parents and children search after each other. True love implanted in a true family reflects the universal image of God, embracing all the universe.

Where does that love begin? It originates from parents. Where does parental love begin? From grandparents and their parents before them, and ultimately all the way back to God. How many generations must you go back in your ancestry in order to find God? It would take a millennium of saying "Great-great-grand" to finally describe your lineage all the way back to God.

How can you really bring God within your reach, then, so you can meet Him? It is simple -- with love. When you truly own and practice love, when you are illuminated by love, the distance between you and God can be covered instantly. If you turn a radio to the correct frequency, it can pick up signals from a distant transmitter, as long as it is functioning correctly. How can we connect this distant God with men? How can we relate to the innumerable generations in spirit world? With the love frequency.

We are like radio receivers; all we have to do is dial the love frequency and fine tune it. God is like a broadcasting station, and His powerful signal is always available; all you have to do is tune yourself to His frequency.

But the amazing thing is that while a regular radio station broadcasts the same program to every radio set, God gives a different wave length to each person. If you love music, God will beam you music; if you love literature, God will give you literature, and so forth. In the spirit world, everyone is fine-tuned to God and in every broadcast God is giving love.

When God is watching you enjoy true love, do you think He will get bored after a while? Even after a millennium He still feels ecstatic joy and overflowing excitement.

What kind of parents are we searching after? Who are the ancestors of True Parents? God is the king of True Parents. God is capable of everything, because He is the omnipresent Creator; nevertheless, the one thing He cannot create but only respond to is love. Even God is helpless in love, because it has to be given; it is not owned. Love does not belong even to the object; the object is only a channel through which love can come to you.

Some people might say they are tired of hearing about sacrificial service and love, but we have to live that way because love comes through the object. In order to generate love you have to exercise initiative by giving service and love; then you stimulate the object to return love to you. The subject must motivate the object to give love. Service and sacrifice are noble words because they are the method of attaining much greater capacity for love.

When you make yourself a big container, you can receive more of God's love. If you are a small container, however, the infinite love of God cannot fully come to you. Each day's effort in our way of life is to become like God, becoming bigger and bigger, approaching His capacity for love. When you create the capacity to receive the infinite love above you, it will automatically come into you without any effort of your own.

In your late teens you feel a certain excitement in your heart. At that magic age, everyone is a poet and a star and a musician. Your eyes start blinking and looking all around, searching after something.

When you embark on your journey to become a container of love, you are not quite round, but oval shaped. You fill out more and more, and after a while you become completely round and begin to revolve. Two people can be contained within this circle of love and fill it completely -- one man and one woman.

At first, a man and a woman are strangers, but as they come closer, they feel more joy every day, penetrating more deeply. Initially, the relationship is shaped like a football, but every day it becomes deeper and fuller and richer and rounder. If they stop pursuing love before reaching the core, however, they will start to separate. Your goal is to become perfectly round, for only then will the forces of God's infinite love fill you like a balloon. When you reach such fullness of love and then have children, they will be sinless children.

Men and women, however, have given birth to children before they became filled with the love of God. Thus, the taste of the love of God has been absent from the fallen world.

Once man and woman are united, they begin to revolve. They need an axis in order to revolve, and when the axis becomes bigger and longer, it turns not only them, but their home, society, nation and world as well. That same axis will turn them all. Love is looking for greater and larger giving. When you selfishly accumulate things you will shrink, but when you give to others you will expand without limit.

God created you to be a true husband and wife, to jump together from level to level, reaching ever higher with your love until you embrace the whole cosmos and ultimately God's own heart. No matter how small your starting position, it must be a full circle; if you embark with perfect roundness, your journey has no limit. If your love is flat, however, it will never go anywhere, but only crash when you try to jump. Divine Principle teaches that a subject and object create a circuit when they are united in give and take, and as a result God will permeate them both.

Today we are talking about the unchanging quality of parental love. That unchanging quality comes from God. You are born as a small plus to your father and mother, a big plus and minus. Your give and take with your mother creates a small circle. When you have give and take of true 1 we, then automatically invisible give and take occurs in the spirit world as well. The physical deed and the spiritual deed converge and join.

When you ask contemporary Christians why God created man, they cannot give the right answer; but we know that God created man out of necessity, in order to fulfill His love. You may think you are trivial individuals, but you have the power to make God laugh and cry.

When you see with God's eyes, the spirit world is not circular, rectangular or square, but the shape of one person. Within it there are the dual essentialities of male and female. You are like a cell of the body, like a child who is born because a tiny portion of his parents' bodies came together. Women have the God-given nature of trying to dig or burrow, while men are always embracing or covering. One is internal and the other external, just as there is internal and external give and take. Women have higher-pitched, sharp voices, while men have deeper voices.

There is only increasing perfection as more and more people come to spirit world, never a problem of population explosion. When just one hair is pulled from your head, your whole body responds. If your ear aches, your whole body suffers. In spirit world the person you hate the most will be your closest neighbor. Since spirit world is a world of harmony, the farthest extremes must be harmonized in love. The person you like the most will be on the other end of spirit world, while the person you hate the most will be at your side. In spirit world you cannot fight; you have to harmonize. There is a saying that the baby in the mother's womb will resemble the person she truly hates the most. The universal truth reveals that we must love everyone unconditionally; if you hate someone, he is not the person who is hurt, but rather you and your child. On the other hand, the person who can love anyone can go anywhere.

The spirit world has eye, nose, mouth, ears, arms, hands. Some people belong to the hands and are always working. Those whose profession involves a lot of walking belong to the legs or feet. Still others belong to the ears, hair, eyes, and so forth.

If you are one of God's blood cells, then your job is to circulate throughout the body.

Perhaps a white person as a blood cell might not want to travel through a black person. If he protests, however, then he is only hurting himself. Can a blood cell say it wants to stay in the eyes and view the world or stay in the tongue and enjoy all the tastes?

Thus, you should be able to go anywhere and embrace anyone: if you do not do that then you will die. If you are suffering, you should realize that in the present, someone will gain the benefit, but in time you will i.e. released.

How many miles would a blood cell have to cover in order to circulate through the billions of cells in one body? The universe is like a human body, and you are like one cell making that journey through it. You must be a blood cell that is welcomed by every part of the body: If you are hated and repelled, then life will be very painful. You will pass through not only the tough places but the loving heart of God as well.

Dr. Durst was a university professor, and now his journey has brought him to be Unification Church president. He will go on and on, and maybe he will return to the position of student. Can he say he does not want that? I am sure he would be delighted to go down because he knows he will come back up. But some leaders foolishly protest against doing menial jobs and demand a certain position.

I am a fast-moving blood cell and I can do anything, whether preaching at Belvedere on Sunday, talking to scientists or working as a laborer, miner, or fisherman. I can even make fishing nets. There is no place I cannot travel; I am ready to tackle any job.

Parents have a certain characteristic -- for the sake of children they can do anything and go anywhere. Such blood cells would not mind going to the smelly feet or to the brain. Even in the fallen world, the purest quality remains parental love, because it is the essence most similar to God. The best model for conjugal love is parental love, the unconditional love of parents for children. Furthermore, if you want to be a patriot, take parental love as your image.

Ideal love must be patterned after parental love; then you cannot go wrong. When you follow parental love, you come closest to the central love of God. A person who has not felt parental love is the most miserable person under the sun because he has no model to guide him. God designed you to be parents so that you can comprehend parental love. Because your parents' love ultimately comes from God, by loving them and patterning yourself after them you come closer to the origin. When you truly love your parents, you are under greater protection: this is your best insurance. When you love the people of the world, you are building fences of love around you on many levels. Then you become the center. Then where will God ultimately enter? He will come to the center of the world, which means He will come and dwell next to you.

My point today is that parents are the representatives of God in the physical world, centered upon love. Thus, when you rebel against that parental love, you are actually rejecting the entire universe.

My unique characteristic is knowing that the way of love is most crucial for every society; I am the pioneer with the solution. That is why you young people come to me and why your parents who do not understand this truth try to kidnap you. Incredible things happen in the Unification Church because we are talking about this incredible love. However, parents do not kidnap their children from this movement for the sake of the universe, but for themselves. Their action is centered on selfishness. But I am working not for my own benefit but for the nation and the world and God.

I adhere to the principle that even though I and the Unification Church become a sacrifice, still this nation and world shall remain under God and prosper. Anyone who focuses on surviving and prospering for himself will not last.

The title this morning, "Searching After True Parents" could be changed to "Searching After True Love," because parents represent unselfish, true love. How would you love God? Just as a parent loves his child. Then the Heavenly Kingdom is not too far away from you. When people asked Jesus where the Kingdom of Heaven was, he replied, "The Kingdom of Heaven is in the midst of you," meaning inside of you, in parental love. Truly, you exist within the love of a parent. In parental love everything can become one.

Americans today are confused about good and evil. We must become torches to light the way for Americans and consummate the revolution of love in this nation and eventually the entire world. The ideal family is really a workshop of parental love where you can practice love. Thus the heavenly society is nothing more than an expansion of the family. When you see a senior citizen you feel toward him as you do toward your own parents or grandparents. You feel toward a little child as you do toward your own son and daughter.

When you live with that philosophy and commitment, no land is foreign to you. Everywhere you go, you meet your parents and brothers and sisters, and every country is your native land. Parental love is the central pillar supporting the entire universe. For the sake of parental love you bear more burdens and sacrifice, and the entire world shall bow down to you. First you practice by becoming a pious son, and then with your own children you practice giving parental love yourself.

While I was searching over the years for the Divine Principle, the answer ultimately came from God that the central truth of the universe was the father-son relationship. But God did not reveal that other half of the answer: that the base of that relationship was love. He left that for me to discover as my responsibility. The essence of the universe is this: the father-son relationship based on true love. Everything else falls within this truth. Even after a million years of history, this truth cannot be changed at all. All history circles around this truth, and no one can change it.

Anyone who practices love on a worldwide scale shall be followed by the world's people; he shall be the host or master of the world. No one can be the master of America by virtue of citizenship alone; it shall be the man and woman who love this country most from the parental point of view, If any organization practices this love in America and the world, it shall prevail on the earth.

My advice to you is to become pious sons and daughters to your parents, to love your husband or wife in the true way, and to love your country as a patriot. Ultimately, the finest advice is to become a saint who loves mankind and the world, being a child of God. This is the trunk-line truth through which everything shall be fulfilled; apart from parents, nothing can be fulfilled or perfected. This is why the Unification Church is centered upon the True Parents as the apex of our ideology. I look at America and the world from this point of view and practice this truth.

Parents are the focus of your gratitude, for they are your protection, a historical fence around you. You must be grateful to your husband or wife as the focus of gratitude, because he or she provides contemporary protection. When you are a patriot, serving your country well, generations to come will applaud you in gratitude.

Parents are the central beings. When you have children, God is elevating you to know the parental heart. God gives you a husband or wife because He wants you to learn parental love. Through all these experiences God wants you to see how much parents love their children.

The family and home is the central stage of the universe and of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Three generations in one home make up a normal family. Once you meet the criterion and are welcomed in that microcosm of the universe -- the family -- then you shall be welcomed everywhere. Where you live makes no difference. An American can be welcomed in Africa when he meets this criterion. An African shall be welcomed in America in the same way. If you practice this on earth, then you shall be accepted in the spirit world.

What gives you the most pride is having wonderful parents, a wonderful wife or husband and wonderful children. There is nothing more to be proud of. How much you love them shall be the measure of your pride. The Kingdom of God on earth shall prevail by this principle.

I push you out every day and give you tribulation, not because I am a thief taking advantage of you, but because I am trying to teach you the principle and give you the Kingdom. The epitome of a beautiful truth is a three-year old who is spanked by his mother and cries, yet still wants to be near her. That is universal beauty. Children cannot leave their parents, even when they are spanked; they just cling to them.

Your citizenship of the Kingdom of Heaven in the eternal world shall be signed by your parents, then endorsed by your husband or wife and finally your children; but parents are the ultimate judge. You have been wandering in search of parents, and now you have found the answer and the parents. By loving True Parents you can live the example and then do the same for your own parents. Finally, love America and mankind as much as you love me. That is why you are here, and that is the purpose of the Unification Church. This is only a training ground. where you practice on True Parents.