The Words of Sun Myung Moon from 1986
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The Words of Sun Myung Moon from 1986 |
It is important for us to understand what the day of Victory of Love means. How did human history come to need this providential day? What should our attitude be on this day?
The Day of Victory of Love is the day that symbolizes the substantiation of the ideal world through the interconnection of God's providence and human will. No matter how much the spiritual world alone or the physical world alone makes effort to accomplish God's providence of salvation, the problems of these two worlds cannot be solved unless they become connected. The Day of Victory of Love is the day on which that connection can be made. Such a day is necessary for the solution of all the problems in the history of the providence.
These problems came about as a result of the human fall. If the original human ancestors had not fallen, then all the holidays we celebrate in the church would not have been necessary. The meaning of these holidays originates in the restoration of the fall.
Even God cannot fulfill love by Himself. Love can be fulfilled only on the foundation of give and take. God created human beings to be His eternal objects of love. Centering on this ideal of love, God and human beings have a relationship which is indispensable for creating the perfection of love. Human beings were not created incidentally; we are indispensable beings.
All existence originates in the love of God. All things are designed in the image of the human being, which is the center of creation. Human beings began in love, and will be perfected through love; hence, we cannot survive without love, and it is only through love that the world will realize happiness.
Everything revolves in a grand movement of love. We can even see that history moves cyclically toward the fulfillment of the ideal of love. It is our destiny to fulfill this ideal. There is no way it can be avoided. We should understand that the Unification Church revolves centered on love. It forms the core of love based on true give-and-take relationships.
A human being consists of mind and body. Individual perfection comes about when our mind and body perpetuate give-and-take action centered on the love of God. After such a love foundation is formed, God will come to dwell with us. Without a good give-and-take relationship with God centered on love, we feel pain which is proportionate to the discrepancy between our present condition and the ideal.
When one is born in love, grows up centered on love, and bears the fruit of love, he or she is said to be perfect. Without mature love, no foundation for bearing fruit can be formed. Just as everything was originally created according to the law of love, so everything is created anew according to the law of love. When the stamen and pistil of a flower perform give and take, the fruit can come into being. The animal kingdom and humankind likewise exist and multiply through the circular movement of love. All beings can be brought into existence and perfected only through the love relationship. It is by uniting with our object that we develop our capacity for love.
Many questions about life have remained unanswered by religion and philosophy. For example, how can the spiritual and physical worlds be perfected? How and why did humans become such unreasonable beings? The effort to answer them has been a strong force in the development of human culture. Since human beings did not know the ultimate cause and purpose of their existence and of historical phenomena, they have emphasized the significance of human progress alone.
What caused human existence? Love did. Then what do you think the purpose of human life is? To fulfill the ideal of love. We came into being through love, and the purpose of our existence is to form the foundation of love, to expand our love by connecting it with others, and to perfect love. To fulfill this ideal, a man and woman should form a relationship and become one and connect themselves with other beings in all directions -- up and down, side to side, backwards and forwards.
The mind is plus (+) and the body is minus (-), and they should be harmonized. Because of the fall, the body did not take the minus position in relation to the mind. The body united with Satan and became established as a plus entity preempting the mind, bringing the two into conflict. Adam and Eve tried to become one centering on false love, but conflict was the only result.
Take a look at creation. The world of all things was created as the object of true love to human beings. It is a kind of museum whose purpose is to educate us in the ideal of love. Even worms and insects perpetuate the survival of their species by pairing. What does the life of a bird center on? If it is not exposed to danger, it has plenty of time to look for food. The bird expresses its hunger with a certain song before it stops to eat, but it sings an entirely different song when it expresses the pleasure of love. Most of its songs are in a response to or in a search of a partner to love.
The male of many bird species -- the pheasant, for example -- is far more beautiful than the female. Birds by nature want to multiply: the more babies, the better.
Therefore, the female bird is dominant over the male and the male bird wants to be attractive to her. In the human world a man's beauty is no less than a woman's. The older men get, the more their beauty comes out. And women spend night and day with their make-up trying to look more beautiful than the men!
If we go to a mountainside and sing a song, we can really enjoy it because we feel we are getting a response. We have a mysterious faculty through which we can assimilate the response of nature and of spirit. For example, when the mind feels what the body feels and the body responds to the mind, a resonance develops between them, which creates sound waves. Harmony is the resonance of plus and minus sound waves of the same cycle.
Sound is connected to motion. Without motion, human beings cannot survive. Children especially like to watch moving objects. Every moving thing generates sounds, big or small. Sounds that are generated from motion have a mysterious, harmonious beauty about them.
Radio antennas work through the relationship of plus and minus electrical charges. In order for an antenna to function best, it must be put in the highest place and a grounding wire must be buried as deep in the earth as possible. This polarity symbolizes the mystery of the relationship between heaven and earth.
In this respect we can say that the highest mountain is the mountain of love and the deepest valley is the valley of love. People travel north, east, south, and west searching for true love. The sea of love is limitless. We can embrace this universe not with knowledge but only with love.
In human life, the most sensitive time is adolescence. During our adolescence, if the plus and minus cycles in our lives resonate in harmony and become one, then we can realize all the principles of the universe, and as its master we can develop a relationship with all its creatures. This is the foundation for love. All human beings have this capacity to love all things.
Parents' love is one of the greatest loves in the human world. Even people in high positions are cowed in the presence of their children. Parental love is unconditional and limitless; it is the kernel of all other loves.
Orphans always seek parental love. At the orphanage they may have a place to sleep and food to eat, but even if they have a decent life, they are not really happy; they always feel the lack of parental love. Working or playing, asleep or awake, they think about their parents and miss their love. They cannot forget about them even when they grow up. This is because all human beings are meant to grow up in the bosom of parental love. The love of parents who lived on this earth thousands of years ago is no different from the love of parents today; parental love never changes.
In love there is no need for a revolution. Love in its original form is eternal, unchanging, and absolute. The source of happiness for human beings is to live in the bosom of love.
What is human happiness? Is the rich man with diamonds happy? Or the woman who wears a lot of perfume? Of course, the happiness of one person cannot be compared with another's, but genuine happiness comes only to those who fall in love with their partner. Those who hear their lovers whisper softly in their ear, the way they always dreamed about, are the most happy.
When did God plan to be the time of greatest happiness for His sons and daughters? In childhood and adolescence, people are filled with the most hope. People in their twenties are just like flowers in full bloom; their bodies are more flexible, balanced, and beautiful than at any other time. In their fifties people become inflexible, wrinkled, and tire easily; they are stepping into the final stage of their lives. And those in their sixties or older can hardly cope with their weak, old physical bodies and feel that the end of their lives on this earth is coming soon.
When is a man happiest? When is a woman happiest? When they are having give and take of love with one another. Love between a man and woman can never be created through force or the power of the mind. Only when the husband embraces, protects, and loves his wife can she really be happy. When a man expresses his loving mind through his body, and the woman responds in mind and body, they can be a happy couple. Would God be happier watching an old couple laugh and dance and talk about love? Or would He be happier watching a young couple singing and dancing and loving each other in body and mind?
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Parents with the younger True Children. Left to right: Kwon Jin Nim,
Young Jin Nim, Yeon Jin Nim, True Father, True Mother, Hung Jin Nim,
Hyung Jin Nim, and Sun Jin Nim.
The most happiness comes in the time of youth. The omniscient and omnipotent God gave human beings their youth as the time of blossoming. He intended for them to develop their happiness centered on their youthful love. In youth we are overflowing with the power of love; we can wholeheartedly embrace each other and become as one. When children begin to experience the physiological changes of adolescence, their beauty and their curiosity about life make their eyes twinkle; they begin to be concerned about their appearance and become interested in the opposite sex. When the time comes and they connect with their partner, a reaction will automatically occur generating energy and causing a revolving motion to begin. The action of going around and around in a spherical motion, not just moving back and forth, harmonizes us with and preserves our environment, and creates a certain mystery. This is the principle of heaven and earth. In this revolving pattern, we center on our partner, not ourselves.
God, who wants to build a world of harmony, thinks that there is nothing more beautiful than the circling motion of love in which a man and a woman become one. It is when we are engaged in this motion of love that God finds the world the most interesting. If there were only men in the world, there would be nothing but fighting; if there were only women, the situation would be the same. Therefore, a happy world is filled with both men and women loving each other.
I matched you as husbands and wives to be a perfect fit. You are still living together because you indeed fit well with each other. If people marry who do not fit together, either one may suffer or even die before very long.
Love contains everything -- joy, as well as pain and sorrow. The sorrow that comes from lost love is the deepest kind of sorrow in the world. The joy that comes from fulfilled love is the greatest kind of joy in the world. Everything that is generated centering on love is the most intense of its kind.
On the day that loves come to an end, the world will go dark. Eyes that lose sight of love will become worse than eyes that are blind. Ears that lose love will be unable to hear. Noses without love will not be able to smell. Whatever eyes see will be darkness; whatever ears hear will only be mocking tones; whatever a nose smells will only be foul. Even a word lacking in love will lose its meaning and fade away. Love is the only true base for great power.
When I was a little boy, I caught a pair of birds. I put them in a cage because I wanted to see if they would kiss each other. I wanted to watch them sing and express their love for each other. Of course later I came to realize that genuine love can only be fulfilled in a natural environment, not in a cage. This was one of the naughty things I did in my childhood, but I conducted such an experiment in my search for the natural principles of life. Through many different experiences I came to learn a great deal from nature. The natural world taught me a more fundamental kind of knowledge than school did. Over a long period of time I came to understand about love.
I was born in the countryside. Each season was completely different from the one before, bringing different kinds of birds and flowers with it. New forms of natural beauty would emerge with the changing seasons. In the city of Seoul today you cannot observe the beauty of nature at all. People who grow up in urban environments sometimes tend to be harsh, egoistic, or unbalanced in some way because they have no contact with the beauty, immensity, and mystery of nature. Encounters with the natural world humble people and teach them a lot.
In my village, when a new season came with new kinds of birds, I would chase after them and try to watch how they conducted their lives in their nests. Sometimes it took me as long as an entire week to find a nest. I would spend up to ten days watching a bird lay her eggs, sit on them, and give birth to her young. I understood the mystery and love of God by looking at how the young birds resembled their parents. I could see that they did not come into existence merely through evolution. They were born from love and the body heat of the mother on her eggs.
Sometimes I would bring baby birds home and take care of them. Even though I thought the mother bird didn't know that I had taken them, she would cry every time she saw me, insisting that I bring the babies back. The love of the mother bird was so strong that she would fight against an intruder at the risk of her life.
Whether or not you love the natural world, it will not change of itself. All that really changes is your feeling about it. If your mind is full of love, you will feel that the natural world is beautiful. If your mind is full of sorrow, you will find nature to be sorrowful. Whether things look beautiful, sorrowful, or even hateful depends upon your state of mind. Even your body changes to reflect your state of mind. When people feel love, their eyes twinkle. But when they feel hate, their eyes appear to be thirsty for blood.
If children do not resolve the hatred in their minds, they will become troublemakers when they grow up. A good and gentle girl can make her environment comfortable after marriage, whereas an ill-tempered girl will easily become unhappy. Many people complain to God about their unhappiness, but eventually they will come to recognize that God is truly impartial, and that their environment is of their own making. If they are absolutely not responsible for the unhappy environment around them, then it must be their parents' or ancestors' fault, and they have to indemnify that.
Human vicissitude actually follows impartial universal laws. The distance between the ups and the downs in our lives corresponds to the extremes of good and evil within us. In order to build stable and steady life-rhythms, we must persevere in leading a life of goodness. We should not complain if we meet with misfortune. After going way down, we are bound to go back up again soon. If we retain hope and faith in our minds, then we can surely continue to go up until we reach heaven.
The major blessing for young people is to look forward to is their marriage. Without fulfilling this ideal of relationship, nothing has any real value. Men and women must take a long time to grow and mature in order to be able to find happiness with their ideal spouse. Even beyond getting an education, their ultimate purpose should be to meet a good spouse; then money and honor can come to them as well.
We may lose our opportunity for a good marriage if we choose a partner based on selfish love or external qualifications. Some women may esteem money or an academic career while forgetting about love, health, and developing qualities that are truly important. These women are making a mistake. Ignoring love, or subordinating it to money or other external conditions, creates the base for an unhappy married life. The same is true of a man who chooses a woman only according to her external beauty. A human face gets a lot of wrinkles, and finally the body perishes; an evaluation of a partner's temporal physical beauty is not based on eternal or fundamental considerations. When we feel that our partner is beautiful in the true sense, we will continue to feel that way when he or she grows old. A true estimation of beauty is made with a loving mind. A face that looks ugly in the daytime may look very beautiful at night, because the loving mind is so adaptable.
Love is the strongest and most fearful power in the world. If you become sick with love, no doctor can heal you. If you fall in love with someone, there is no alternative; the only possible course you can think of is to have your love fulfilled. Love can make a man's power as weak and gentle as a spring breeze before a woman. Among men the power of the fist decides a lot, but that fist can become as soft as cotton before a lovely woman. Therefore, women don't need to be afraid even of a wild man. The wilder he is, the more he deserves your love.
Husband and wife should be complementary, so a wild man and a gentle woman can make a happy couple. A man may open his eyes wide when he laughs, while his wife may close hers a little bit when she giggles. If the husband's eyes are getting bigger and bigger while his wife's are getting smaller and smaller as they laugh together, then this couple must be intoxicated in love. The conversation between a husband and wife who love each other is more beautiful than any poem or picture in the world; even just the words, "you and me together" or "we two" are incredibly beautiful!
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Parents with the elder True Children. Left to right: Jin Sung Nim,
Hyo Jin Nim, Hyun Jin Nim, Kook Jin Nim, True Father, True Mother, Ye
Jin Nim, Un Jin Nim, In Jin Nim, Nan Sook Nim, and Hoon Sook Nim.
It is marriage that opens the door to human happiness. It is good to study marriage, but we should not be in a hurry to experience love. The door of love opens only in due course, and we should wait until it opens to enter in. We should open the door with dignity after we have become the masters of love. Our wedding ceremony is the ultimate event which reveals and confirms our love. It is the gate to an eternal palace. Love is indeed the greatest power; it is beyond time and space.
God designed couples to be happy with each other. A husband and wife should not fight with each other from the time they pass through the door of the Blessing. Whispered words between a husband and wife together in bed at night can resolve all the fatigue and hatred of the world. You should express to each other the conviction that you were each destined to be reborn through the other.
Love knows no development or revolution; it is the Principle that love is eternal and perfect in itself. Love should never be used as a means or an instrument to get something; it is an end in itself. When you open the door of love with your mind and body united, then your mind will resonate along with the entire universe. You will want to have a relationship with the universe in all three dimensions; you will realize and understand all the natural principles of life. When you watch the leaves falling from the trees, in your imagination they will be like flowers. You may even want to write a poem or novel to express the intoxication of your love.
A wife who has tasted love will want to put her head deep into her husband's bosom to take a nap. A happy woman does not have a sober mind; she will miss her husband so much that she will want to see him many times a day, and even call him at work asking him to come home for lunch! The same is true for her husband. He will want to use her lap as a pillow and go to sleep. He will rush home any time he can. And he may even be willing to do housework that he would not do before he was married. Such a change occurs in men and women after they get married.
A wife should not think that her responsibility toward her husband is fulfilled just by serving dinner to him when he comes home from work. It is most important to take time at the table for give and take of words of love. If a wife consoles her husband with the same loving voice she used when they met for the first time, he will completely recover his fatigue.
A husband does not want to see any radical change in his wife's character, nor a wife in her husband's character, from the time when they first fell in love with each other. Each wants to preserve the original impression they had at the beginning of their love. They want their love to persist in a pure, unchanging form forever. They don't want any revolution in their love. When something changes between them, when they no longer care about the love that once intoxicated them, couples want to divorce. Human minds might change even though love itself never changes.
God's heart maintains certain laws for all beings, for the sake of happiness. All beings are to go through a certain process of building eternal happiness and settle down within the territory of God's love. This is the basis for true life, the foundation for ideal existence.
Human beings are born in love, grow up in love, look for partners in love, love each other, and then go to the spirit world in love. The foundation of horizontal love is connected to the vertical axis of love by giving birth to offspring. Human beings should fulfill the ideal of love through the four position foundation, fulfilling the twelve objective purposes centered on God's vertical love. Where the four position foundation is established and perfected, people will be strong enough to overcome any kind of darkness. If you are together with loving people, then you will be happy even if you are traveling on a dark and rugged path. Neither day nor night will cause any problem for you. A path centered on love does not lead to despair, but to hope. When a loving couple stands on the mountaintop after having overcome many difficulties, their joy will be proportionate to the amount of suffering they have gone through. Victory won by overcoming suffering through love is truly invaluable.
A rice cake is not necessarily a perfect object for an offering. But if a person puts the rice cake in a perfect bowl called "love" and offers it sincerely to God, then He will find it delicious. If the container is perfect, He will eat even the imperfect rice cake. Thus, whatever is given purely can be received purely. All the principles of the universe operate perfectly, just like a perfect bowl of love. The present you receive from the person whom you love is infinitely valuable and precious.
Some presents are not wholesome. A present offered by a merchant may not be valuable because his motives may be mixed with his business interests; it may be a kind of bait. Women should be especially careful if a man wanting love approaches them. A present coming from a false person is a trap that will lead them to unhappiness. A man who traps a woman is a tyrant and a hypocrite; he may try to own love, but in the end he will destroy every cell of love. Women should be warned about such tyrants of love who can destroy them in body and mind.
True love is pure and does not change. Since it does not change, it has great value. For example, gold, diamonds, and pearls are precious because they do not change. Human beings consider unchangeable things precious, and use them as a measure of value. We can measure the value of changeable things only through an unchangeable yardstick; this is what makes comparison possible. Nothing which is changeable is precious. If love were changeable, then it would have no real value.
The earth has a geographic reference point which is absolute. It is the Greenwich Astronomical Observatory through which the first meridian passes. If this point is changed, then every other geographic reference point will change accordingly. By utilizing longitude and latitude in reference to this point, we can accurately locate every other point on the surface of the earth. Therefore, it is desirable that the Greenwich meridian does not change.
God is the measure of value for all things because His characteristics do not change. Then what is the yardstick for measuring the entire universe? True love. True love is valuable not only because it is unchanging, but also because it cannot be exclusively owned by anybody. It can be shared by everybody. Love transcends time and space, even in heaven or hell. Love is the cause of all being, and so it has more value than the universe itself. The true value of love is so absolute that no one, including myself, can measure it. Even God Himself cannot change the value of love, and He cannot go against love. If He were to ignore love, then He would lose His own essence, perfect¬ness, omniscience, and omnipotence. Since He lost human beings as His partners of love, He had no other choice but to work His providence to save them. He has been calling out to us, because no one, not even God, can own love by himself.