Book Four - True Family
Chapter Three - The Family Is the Model for the Kingdom of Heaven
Section 6. The Family is the Training Ground of the Heart

We cannot live separate from the heart. Even if you are the president of a country or possess global authority, you would not be able to live if you had no place to express your heartfelt joy. You would not be able to feel the deepest satisfaction from the people who are under your command, your officers or the people who follow you. You must feel it in your family. You should be able to return home and feel joy through your wife and children. In such a way you should be proud of this joy in front of others. This joy is a primal joy; not a secondary joy. It is the same with God. Even if He was to restore the whole world, without a family He would not feel joy. So we need our families after all. (25-85, 1969.9.30)

Parents should be the head of the family and teachers should be the head of the educational institutions which represent society. Parents raise you by giving you milk thereby assisting your physical development as well as helping you emotionally. Then what is school for? It trains you for your future life in society. If the family is the training ground of the emotions, then school is the experimental training ground of society.

But society is not where training ends. Where does it end? It ends with the nation. The nation has a president. Why is it that people miss the president and want to be near him? When they have experienced everything, from the family to the society, they go on to the next level. The president is the fruit of the third stage after the formation and growth stages. A seed divides, sends roots down and a shoot up, and then, through circulatory action, growth begins. After such division comes a synthesis when flowers and fruit are produced.

Schools raise the people needed by the nation by educating the qualified elite to serve the nation. They are training and experimentation sites. Training is not real life but a preparation stage. You should not make the wrong preparations. What is the family? It is a training ground for the heart. It is a place where you train your heart to love. This is why you should live affectionately like brothers and sisters at school and also live affectionately like brothers and sisters in the nation. Parental education is needed at school, in society and also by the nation. Parents should pass everything in the realm of heart on to their children. They should create a foundation of heart for their children by teaching them to follow their parents' footsteps in living in certain ways in the family, the society, and in the nation. (180-130, 1988.8.22)

When you look at a family, it is not necessarily a good one just because it has a good house and a good environment. Conversely, no matter how bad a family's environment may be or how shabby its house may be, if it offers you peace and you are able to connect all things in your life to it, then it is a good family. It has a foundation of heart upon which the parents and children live for the sake of each other. This is the original homeland for our memories and the source of motivation for all living. Therefore it becomes the basis for determining our happiness in life. (29-16, 1970.2.15)