[We would like to start with a poem that came from a wall of a children’s home in Calcutta, under the care of Mother Themes, and it’s called, "Anyway."]

Anyway

People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motive.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spent years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

Good morning. This morning I want to give you the title of the talk before anything else, because through your sharing with one another and with Me this morning you have brought forth something that is extremely vital and important to understand. And I’m going to bring a point forward that you may never have thought of. The name of this talk is "Admitting Your Own Need Before God."

Do you remember the passage in the Bible that says, God makes His rain to fall on both the just and the unjust -- on everyone? He doesn’t rain on only the good people. And water is always available to everyone. Well, here is a strange contradiction in the world that I painfully observe time and again. That is, the unjust, those who are selfish, so often are ready to take everything. They’re not so conscious of taking My word or taking My love, or of taking into themselves and into their lives that which is from Heaven, let us say. But they’re very conscious of building up many treasures for themselves. And so often those who have the desire to live an unselfish and righteous life of faith are quite concerned about taking anything for themselves and, therefore, don’t want to seem selfish to Me or to those around them or within themselves. And so, they go day after day serving others, giving out, praying for the neediness in other lives and in other lands. But they have a very hard time to admit before Me their own very simple need.

I’ll come right to the point. It’s true, My rain does fall everywhere. And for the spiritual life that means My love, My knowledge, My closeness to you is absolute. And it is true for everyone. And yet, so often you think that by accepting that, taking that for yourself, that you would be diverting it from a more important place.

I want to ask you a question and I want to make an analogy. What about the trees? My rain falls on them. And the reason that they are green and tall and strong and bring forth fruit, and can live for such a long time and give so much joy to this world is that they hungrily take in that water from their roots. They have the most amazing ability to draw in all of that nutrition at the roots. And what happens? It’s drawn up through their bodies, into their branches, out into their leaves, and eventually becomes rich fruit that is picked by so many. Season after season, one apple tree can feed perhaps a million people. Did you ever think of that? Now, would we ever say that the tree is selfish?

Then what is the real situation here? Many of you in the Unification movement have learned that to pray for yourself and for your own needs is not always a good thing. So, in your public prayer and even in your private prayer it’s hard for you to pray oftentimes for yourselves. Although there are more and more who are awakening to the fact that this is not selfish, still there are many who shy away from that kind of prayer.

But here is what you’re doing, and again I’ll use the analogy of the tree: My love, My knowledge, My wisdom, My heart for you has fallen all around you, just like the water for that tree. But by failing to admit your own need, so often you are failing to open your own roots to Me. Now, a tree that will not do that dies. It becomes unable to sustain its own life and, therefore, eventually unable to bear fruit, unable to be this green, beautiful thing that gives joy to so many. And it becomes brittle, easy to break. You, too, are in the same situation as that tree.

Why do you think that I inspired one writer of the Bible to parallel the first ancestors as trees? Because it’s such an apt model for human life. When you do not open your root, in other words, when you do not admit your own need for Me -- whether it be a fear or a concept that you should never pray for yourself because that’s selfish, or whatever blocks you from simply opening your heart to Me -- then you begin to dry up. And so, your prayers, however noble they are in terms of praying for the world, praying for others, praying for great Providential purposes, still you feel something missing. And that’s why many lose the power of prayer after many years or feel somehow that God isn’t working. In essence, it’s like a tree that wants so much to bear fruit but will not open its roots to the moisture in the earth around it that I have given from the sky. And eventually there is no fruit; the tree dies.

This life without moisture for the tree makes it very easy for the tree to break. You know how wood is when it becomes very dry, like a dry tree branch whose roots are no longer working; it’s so easy to break it. Your spiritual life can be the same way. After many years of faithful service on the outer level, on the obedience level, on the level of loyalty to your movement, if that inner growth is not happening, if that water of life is not coming through your prayers and through your daily relationship with Me, it is not hard for you to break. You can remember those who seemed very obedient, very loyal, very faithful, and then one day they were just gone. That’s never the result of one day’s events; it’s usually the result of a long-term problem.

And here is the problem that I am speaking about this morning, this inability to open your roots, your inner heart, to Me and to allow Me to work in your life. This is not selfish, just as the tree is not selfish to admit the water around it into its system. Because then the tree gives out so much. Do you have so little faith in yourselves that by taking in the nourishment that I want to give you personally you’re going to become self-satisfied and not produce any fruit? I would say recheck yourself, then.

Is the child selfish to want to be loved by the parents? Some of the great lives in history, though they may have come out of poverty or very difficult circumstances materially, still became great in good part because of a profound parent-child relationship and a very deep root as a result. And, therefore, the fruit could be shared with the whole world. So, it’s the same in our relationship. And don’t you ever think for a moment that it’s selfish to open your heart to Me, to admit your own need.

Another point I want to make is that this idea that somehow by calling out for Me you are going to divert Me from My attention to other more important purposes is making Me into a human being like yourselves. It’s making Me into some sort of executive who gets pulled off an important job to go take care of some silly little need of an employee. Think about that! I am not an executive. I am not limited in that sense by time or space or position. Those who teach this are speaking more about themselves and how they might relate to the needs of a single individual than about Me. But that is not Me. As it said in the Bible, I make My rain to fall on all things, on all places, because I know that for the beauty of the whole there has to be the beauty of the each. Do you understand?

And that beauty comes out of our communion together. Your beauty, the fruits of your life that come out of our communion, will have a profound effect on millions of people (far more than the apple tree) through however many years of your life that you live on the earth. And so, it would be foolish if I did not address your need, if I did not come to your roots and want to nourish you, because what is the world anyway except, simply, just a large group of individual needs. The reason you form governments, the reason you make big businesses, is for the individual, each one. What’s the collective if it’s not just a bunch of individuals? If each one is sick, you have a sick world. If each one is brittle for the lack of that rain from Heaven, then you have a broken world.

And so, please, ONCE AND FOR ALL, once and for all, PLEASE... once and for all, put aside this ridiculous notion that to admit your own need in front of Me is somehow selfish and will take My focus away from more important things. That simply shows you are completely missing the relationship between Parent and child, between Me and you.

I really don’t want to say so much more this morning except for this one point. It’s such [tearfully] a painful point to see My children oftentimes starving when I am right there with the richest dish that I have prepared for them. Yes, there is a table set for each and every one. And I have faith in you that you will do the right thing with the nourishment that comes from that table. I know that. What kind of parent would fail to feed its child because of fear the child would then become selfish? I have faith; I know that.

But how about you? Do you have confidence through our relationship that you will become the bearer of great fruit to the world? Please understand this and realize the contradiction that many of you have been living in. This breaks My heart! It is a trick of My adversary to let you starve. You saw a video the other night about people who do not eat for fear of getting fat -- you call it anorexia. And they literally starve themselves to death. Well, this has been the case of so many people who wanted to walk the spiritual path. It is actually the most selfish action in itself, because you are depriving Me, the world, and finally yourself, of what you can be, in the name of some kind of pious goal. But, again, I have to say, it’s a trick of My adversary.

So, I want you to open those roots to allow the rain from My Heaven to come to you, and know that the fruits will be great and plentiful, not just blooming once a year like the trees outside of your window, but all year! Three hundred and sixty-five days a year there can be fresh fruit on your lips; that’s the beauty of your life. Also, when you have that rich water of life flowing through your daily life, you have such a great strength. I mentioned this already but I’ll bring it up again: You’re not brittle, you’re not easily broken. When we are combined together, you and I, fully and deeply, consciously, you have tremendous flexibility. Even though the pressures or the wind may blow very strongly, bend you right down to the ground, but you can spring back up because that moisture gives you bending strength. Like bamboo. It allows you to develop strength even, through those tests and trials.

So, with all My heart I say this to you and to everyone who later will read these words, please examine this and recognize that spiritual anorexia, as you say, has been the condition of so many. And I do not want this by any means. It will NOT bring the Kingdom. It will not bring the Kingdom, and it will allow the wrong kind of powers to take charge of your world, and the Kingdom will be forever ahead of you, just like the anorexic persons who think that somehow they’re going to have a wonderful result, and yet, it becomes more and more contradictory as time goes by. You have a great life ahead of you. There is a great future in this world if this can be understood. And those who would say to you, "Don’t pray for yourself; you must pray for others," may not realize that very simple need and may not realize the parental heart and the essence between parent and children and may assume, "Well, you’ve already got that relationship." But it’s not so.

I’m glad we could talk about this morning. I’m going to leave you with this, this one powerful thought. Reflect on it and recognize it in your prayer and in your daily life with Me. The fruit? You do not have to worry about it. The apple tree does not worry about the apples; they come because it does what it needs to do. It admits its need for the water tremendously.

I love you both and I love each and every one. Let’s close his morning and I’ll ask W [wife] to pray.