Good morning. I am grateful for your thought and your inclusion of Me in your sharing. You will find that as time goes by this will become a much more natural thing for you. And there will be a time when the three of us will share as openly as you would with your oldest son sitting here, as if the three of you were sharing. It will be just something to laugh about, to think that I wasn’t here.

The two of you could share on and on for hours without really being aware of My presence and, therefore, there would come a breakdown in communication and oftentimes a lack of truly penetrating one another in a true and spiritual sense. But when we all three come together like this, then there is a very natural flow. Of course, there may be some disagreement or misunderstanding, but it doesn’t break you in spirit; ultimately, you can overcome. And the larger reality is that we are together. As I’ve told you, that’s truly what will develop as you allow this awareness to become your reality.

What you have shared this morning is a very important point. I would like to call this talk, as your husband already mentioned, "The Graduation of Heart." I speak about heart a lot, don’t I? Because that is the central point in our relationship. If there is no doorway of the heart through which you and I can truly pass back and forth and meet one another, then there is a lack of true guidance in your lives. There will be a lack of true substance until you open that door. And so, that door of the heart is critically important for you, and I will speak about this until it becomes a reality for many, many people.

If we speak about graduation of the heart, then first we need to go back to the earlier years before graduation -- the years, for example, in the life of a child, when he/she is very young. And let us imagine that this child has brothers and sisters living together with their parents. It’s at this time, during the very young part of life, that parents’ authority is very important. The children will even test that authority, not because they want, ultimately, to go away from it, but they want to know that it’s there.

They want to feel that authority in their lives. And though they may protest at times and cry and stomp their feet, still it is an all-powerful force that the young child craves, because that authority, the child knows deeply, speaks of the parents’ love for the child. If the parent says, "I love you," and just spends the whole day reading the newspaper in another room, it has very little impact on the child’s life if it goes on day after day. But when the parent stops the child from doing something harmful to himself or puts him in a bathtub even if the child wants to go to bed, and washes the child vigorously from the day’s play, then, again, though the protest may be there from the little one, there is finally a deep sense of being loved and cared for.

This is truly what you see throughout the natural world and what the true relationship is as well. Unfortunately, this is not always the case today, because the world is so confused in terms, of the order of love and the true meaning of love for one another. The world has become very materialistic even with love, and that’s why there’s so much preoccupation with sexual love and sexual pleasures. In modern culture, love has come more and more to mean physical feelings rather than spiritual feelings of true substance and true quality. But that’s not My topic today and I’m not going to go into that so much.

It’s something that you know anyway.

What I want to focus upon is the parent-child relationship in terms of this graduation of heart. This growing child who has experienced the strong authority of the parent will recognize, as he/she looks back, that such authority was needed. For example, when the child has a brother or sister or when there are several siblings, the immaturity of childhood brings out a lot of conflict and selfishness. This is something quite natural. Even in the animal kingdom you see little cubs fighting or kicking one another, sometimes playing but sometimes angry also. They are totally selfish little beings because that is the time when they need so much and have to take in so much to grow.

And oftentimes they don’t think much about the person next to them, even their brother or sister. As you can see even in your own family experience, there can be much fighting going on. The parent faces this reality with the children. Yet, the parent who has truly reflected on the heart of parenthood can go beyond anger at the children’s selfishness and realize that they simply need to grow. So, the parent sets about the task of helping the children grow and helping them, ultimately, to become unselfish people whose lives are centered on values beyond their own stomachs or their own good feelings. Their lives become centered on the good of those around them. Those whom you recognize as truly great people have lives that have even been centered on the welfare of the entire world -- like a Jesus Christ or your own leader.

I want to say something today that is very important for you and for many to understand. And that is the role of the parent in bringing the growing child to God. This, of course, is not always recognized in today’s world. There are many parents today who don’t see God, or Myself, as an important being. They can easily raise the child to become a financial expert or a brilliant professor, or whatever, but the spiritual aspect of the child is often overlooked. And so, I speak truly of the original heart of the parent as I created it.

Those parents who are in touch with that original heart should truly know that their ultimate task is not to center the child upon their own authority, as when the child was young. But as the child grows and as that child’s heart develops through the elementary school, middle school, and high school of heartistic education, finally the parent (attending with tears the graduation of that child’s heart) is to pass that child on to a much higher authority. And that is Me. Because in his maturity, that child is to have a complete and personal relationship with Me. Now, when the child was young, of course, the parent could take them to Sunday school or to church or to give them personal teaching about the meaning of God. And yet, as you see in your own experience, still it’s rather new for the child and it takes him a while, with few exceptions, to really develop a true and deep heart of communication with Me.

But as the child grows, this heart will deepen and become more and more hungry for that personal relationship. Ultimately, then, there is a time of graduation. If we look at the physical parallel: At the time when the child graduates from college, sometimes even before, that young man or woman may want to say goodbye to the parents, move into another place; sometimes they may want to marry and say goodbye. And this is always a very reflective time for parents, a time of realizing that "Perhaps we’re not the center of their lives anymore."

There’s a new center, the new husband or wife. And they’re going to have children soon, and then those children will become the center of their lives. And so, there’s a mixture of nostalgia and a sense of loss, but in another greater sense in that original parent’s heart there is a feeling of joy, because now that child can go on and realize the beauty of parenthood, the beauty of raising his or her own family, the beauty of freely building an independent life. And so you see this process from young childhood to this graduation time and, indeed, then the parents are not the final point of the child’s life. They are the agents toward that final point.

Now, if we speak on the internal level, the final desire in the spiritual life is to build a deep and lasting bond with Me, to open that door of each person’s heart. And that’s something even parents cannot do for a child. They can try to lead the child to the door and try to help the child as he realizes more and more the importance of opening that door in his own heart. When that door begins to open, that is the time when the parents begin to assume a new role. They are no longer the leaders, in a sense, but they have to be able to give that leadership over to Me. And this is when they have really initiated the final fulfillment of their role as parents.

Another point here is that as each son and daughter opens that door within their own heart, then truly they will know the meaning of their relationship with one another. When they were young they fought; they pulled back and forth, fighting for a piece of food or a toy. But as they reach that point toward graduation of the heart, they come to value one another much more. And, in the deepest sense, you may even see stories of a brother or sister giving up his or her own life to save a brother or sister in the same family, and it’s beautiful.

Also, beyond the family, with the graduation of heart you see the story of one who gave his or her own life for another human being whom they didn’t even know, because something deep came out of them in response to human need around them. And again, the parents of that kind of person would cry deeply at the loss of that child and yet stand very proud and tall at the action of that child. And so, ultimately, what started as selfish, tiny childhood should grow into unselfish, true maturity.

Now I want to speak to you about the situation of your own movement and, in many ways, of religion as a whole. I said to you a few talks ago that religion is like a foster parent: There is a time when the foster parent must bid the child goodbye and let him return to the place of his true home. And so, for you that true home has been, for much of your life in the Unification movement, the home of the True Parents. Yet, ultimately, even in the spiritual family of the True Parents (which is your movement) there must be a time of the graduation of heart. And though the parents were in a role of arbitrating the fights of those who were in the position of children or taking a strong authority in the lives of those young spiritual children, there must come a time when those children grow up and graduate into their own relationship with Me directly. And this is something that even the parents cannot give them.

If the children insist on following those parents with the same sense that they had when they were younger, there comes to be a kind of a block. There must finally be a going beyond the parents to the point where the child walks through that door of the heart and comes into that direct relationship with Me. And you were right, W [wife], there is a deep need for this to happen at this time in your movement. In the history of many religions in the world (especially Western religion because it tends to be more messianic and more leader-oriented), there has often been the concept that only the leader could have a great revelation and that it was good and faithful to follow that leader’s revelation. And a follower would even think it was arrogant and wrong to have his own revelation, that maybe this was in conflict with the leader’s revelation. I want to tell you something: There are many relationships with Me in the world.

Those sons or daughters in history who had the great revelations that inspired many were special people whose hearts were already deeply concerned, in many cases, with the state of the world around them. And because of that deep concern and caring I could come to them and speak to them, and they could understand Me, because already they had a certain seriousness in the direction that I wanted to show them. But that does not mean that those who would follow them could never have another revelation from Me and could only follow that first person’s revelation. Because, just as with the deep sense of relationship that the parents would have to Me, ultimately the children must also develop this. And what the parents realized may not be the same thing as what the children have found in their own revelation or relationship with Me -- but each one is valid.

Truly you are living at a time in the world, not just in your movement but in the world, where I want to speak to many individuals and want them to know that we can have a personal relationship, just as I’ve had with Jesus Christ, with Sun Myung Moon, with any of the people that they worship as great saints in history. This realization must come to humanity or there will be no Kingdom, but only forever the situation of young children still fighting one another within the family. The graduation of heart is the time when the children (1) go beyond the parents and (2) must come to realize their true relationship with one another. Then I will ask you, as you look around do you see that happening? Do you see it happening in yourself? This is something that needs your reflection, because, as I have said so many times, the purpose of your movement, of any religious movement, is not itself. The purpose of one family is not the family. The purpose of the family is ultimately to give something to history and to the world. So, truly, I am looking for those who are ready to graduate, those who really long for that graduation today and to go beyond this family level -- even the Unification family.

I tell you this strictly, because I know the tragedy that lies ahead if you refuse to graduate. The fighting will continue in the name of whose parents are best between different groups, and it will continue to be a great scar on the face of humanity. I come as a healer. I want to heal that scar. I cannot do it by force. I can only do it by sincerely trying to help you understand what you need to do! My way is never to criticize or to condemn any person.

The only thing I long for is that you open your eyes and see clearly what you as an individual must do. And I tell you that if you will seek this graduation of heart and if you long for that in yourself, there will be those who stand against you, who will think of you as unfaithful or as leaving your parents. Yet, I ask you to reflect and have confidence deeply within yourself as to what you are doing and recognize the difference between blindness and vision. And follow that vision. If you do, the world will be saved.

If you do not, the world will continue as it is and you will see great tragedy in the 21st and 22nd centuries. That’s how important this is. I TELL YOU DEEPLY AND STRONGLY, THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN YOUR LIVES AND TO TAKE A STAND FOR THIS AND NOT AGAINST ANYBODY, BUT FOR ME! I’m asking that. Make no mistake. Learn this with all your heart and all your depth, because if you want to talk about true religion this is the only true one. And it’s the original one, the one that is not truly a religion, but is simply our original relationship and your original relationship together.

You know, maybe some people look at all these talks coming out of you and say, "What is this? Some kind of a newsletter?" But it’s My plea and My cry to be known, to be understood. I’m not interested in publishing a newsletter. I just want you to know Me in your own heart. Someday "newsletters" won’t be necessary; it can be life.

I’ll leave you with that this morning. I love you.