About a week ago, we got a letter from a Japanese brother. It was a letter about his decision to go back to Japan. He was originally planning to stay in Korea for 4 or 5 years in order to learn Korean, while his family was in Japan. But he said, after attending our services regularly, he realized that most important thing he needs to take care of is his family and we were happy for his decision.

He said, according to researchers, a child who does not get enough attention from his / her parents before at the age of 6, will try to get attention. That is a lack in their early stage of life will make them want attention. So they do anything to get attention back even though it is a negative attention.

Another interesting thing I always remind myself of when I feel very frustrated about my children, which can happen sometimes, honestly speaking, frequently can happen, I always remind myself that is we are living in the time to build the relationship with my children. Somebody once told me that after the age of 12 it is very hard to rebuild the relationship back with our own children. But what if my children are already teenagers or they already grown up and they're blessed already.

Well, how about just like writing letters or e-mails regularly that emphasizes why they are blessings to your life. And how you want be a bigger blessing and change yourself in bigger blessing into other people. What I believe about parenting is that there is no flowers formula. So brothers and sisters please love your children. Don't spoil them but love them so much and tell them how precious they are in your eyes and God's eyes. Because you're the only one in this entire universe who can teach your children about God's love.

Brothers and Sisters always remember that Heavenly Father loves our children. We love you so much and we believe in you... AJU!!!

I heard an interesting story that I came across and it was about a young man. His mother came to him, it was a Sunday morning, she shook him and she said, "Hurry up, Tony it's time to go to church! Hurry and Get up." and he said, "Mom, I'm not going to go to church." She tried to convince him, try to get him get out of a bed and he kept on, you know, go under his blanket.

She said, "Tony you better get up, we have to go to church." So Tony got up and he said, "Mom, I'm going to give you two reasons why I'm not going to go to church. Number one nobody likes me and I don't like them." (laugh from audience) And mom said, "Well let me give you two reasons why you are going to Church, number one you're 53 and number two you're the pastor!"(Laugh)

Today I want to talk about Regaining our Subjectivity in our lives. You know when we look at the Principles, such a wonderful systems of the whole notion of Give and Take or being with the subject and having an object. We see in the Principles of course that notion of the Three Objective Purpose that depending on who is the subject and in a giving time there different object.

It is important in our life, where we are going to live the wonderful life that our True Parents bless to live to understand that we have to continue to regain and re-claim our subjectivity or the subject position in our life. If we look at from the perspective of a Principle or Principle Perspective it's interesting to know that subject is actually the first to give, it's not that the subject is waiting to receive from the object. The subject actually has to give first. So husbands, if you're out there, if you're wishing to receive love from your wife, what you have to do? You've got to give it first. Wives if you want to receive love from your husband and be subject, you have to give it first in advance. Ok!?

So in our lives as well, to regain that subject position of our minds, of our mind life and to live free in that mind, it's very important. It's so easy to fall into temptations but it's very hard to live with a guilt that we receive from such actions -- knowing that our conscience knows what is right -- a stinging conscience. It's very hard to live like that. Let us see like this, almost as if our mind is like an internal environment.

You know True Father describes it like this, "Sok Saram and Kut Saram" that basically means, your internal self and you external self, the person outside and the person inside. Person outside of is course the person that everybody sees but from the inside, internally, we have to really attend to that person. It's almost as if there's a certain environment in our minds. And then we are rearing or raising a little child at first in that environment.

Now just like any parents would want to surround their child with good environment, healthy foods, and positive words of encouragement. It's very important in our mind life, in our own mind environment to protect that inner-self within, to be able to shield it with good nurturing, you know encouragements, to know that we need to feed it the right things for it to grow, to mature in to what God wants it to become.

In the same way, if we are filling our minds with negative thoughts about ourselves, if we are filling up with, "Oh, I'm never good with this. I'm not qualified. I'm not really that talented. You know I can't really do anything right. Nothing really good happens to me." If we’re doing such things in our minds, we are feeding that child, that inner-self, with those kind of elements.

And thus our lives will take that in, just like a child that can become sick, so it is with our minds. We can also become more and more, as we can make things increase, but we can also decrease. We don't want to do that. It is just like if you are a parent, one of the initial practices of a parent that you have to learn quickly is to learn how to change diapers.

All parents have done that, we have 5 kids, we change a lot of diapers, or we did, they're bigger now, none of them are wearing diapers now. But it is same in our minds, sometimes our minds can allow thoughts to come in that harm the child, things that are not good for then, not a clean enough for them.

Maybe someone the spoke negative words over in lives. Maybe they told us that we're going to fail. We have no chance to succeed and if we let that in, that will poison in the environment in our lives. And in just the same way it will start negatively affecting the inner-self that True Father is talking about. Whenever we have that situation we can not change the dirty diapers and put on another dirty diaper -- that is not the way to provide cleanliness for our inner-self.

In the same way when we receive bad things, maybe somebody spoke to us that very same negative way. We have to get that out of that bad environment. We have to learn how to objectify that and get out of the environment. And then we can continue to learn to nurture a good environment for the child, the person or our inner-selves.

There's a very simple practice, and that is the practice of objectification. And that practice is a very simple mind practice. You can all utilize it in your lives right now, today. But the whole notion is that we need to re-claim our subjectivity over our mind life, and our mind environment. And to do that we have to learn the practice of objectification; that is to remove this things from our mind environment.

Every time we say, "Nothing right happens to me. I'm dumb. I'm not attractive," or "Nobody likes me," or "I can’t do it right," or "I always fail." When we say such things we have to immediately notice them, objectify them, separate them and rid them from our mind environment. In the same way God never created us to be this person who is always criticizing ourselves, telling other people they cant do anything right, telling ourselves that we can’t do things right or we have no talents, we have no ability. That is not our destiny. That is not what God intends us to do. Instead we are made in his image. We're supposed to be creative. We are filled with wisdom, power. We're filled with the ability to overcome obstacles. To remain focused.

We have all these wonderful blessings in our lives. It's so important that we're able to cultivate those things and rid ourselves and all the things in our environment that may be hurting us. When we look the story of Jesus, in Matthew 4:1-11, we see the whole story of the temptation of Christ. Where Satan is tempting Jesus, and as you remember that third temptation when Jesus was taken by Satan, he took him up to the highest mountain and said, "I will give all the kingdoms of the world if you bow down and worship me." And we can see there Christ overcame that temptation.

He was able to protect his God given destiny. In the same way it is important that when we are given temptations in our lives, that we are able to overcome them and continue to rise to be the best person that we can become.

It's interesting also to know that in the Buddhist tradition in the, Bada Na Sutta Nipata and this it the Pali Pali kind of old tradition of Telibana Tradition. But it is interesting to know that Jesus had temptation and the Buddha also had temptations in his own life. Because many people, when they study Buddhism, and I study Buddhism quite a bit, but many people will know that Buddhism is a very peaceful art, it doesn't talk about any… you know, it's very peace, loving, etc.

But when you look at the actual phraseology here, we see that Buddha took on a very strong stand against temptation. In the Buddhist Tradition Satan is a Mara, it’s the same kind of figure. But it is known as Mara. And the Buddha utters such things like this, "None but the brave will conquer the temptation of a Mara." Very strong words. "Better I die in battle now then choose to live in defeat, for I have faith, energy and wisdom too." But the interesting thing to know is that both Jesus and Buddha are saints and in our tradition they are saints as well.

But that they have both had to take a very strong stance against things that are coming in to their minds, to their environment and to their hearts. They have really had a strong stance, "Better that I die in battle now." And when we are overcome and when we are being hit with the temptations of things that are around us, or even things in our minds.

You know, being tempted to think that we are incapable, or being tempted to think that we have no value. When we are tempted by such things; when we are tempted to believe that we have no right to be happy or to be the blessed people; that we don't deserve what True Parents have given us... When we are tempted to do such things, we have to take a strong stands in our minds. We have to protect our minds, shield them from such things entering in.

We can do a very simple practice here, it's a very simple meditative mind practice. And it's the practice of objectification and will do a just couple of minutes. I'd like to invite you to just close your eyes now and let us now start now objectifying the thoughts in your mind. What will we do is… any thought that you have in your minds, we will simply give it a name.

We will objectify it and label it we will name it. Just in our mind, it may be anything, just where you mind goes, we may thinking about thought or we may call it, "I'm thinking now" and just objectify it to you. Look at the thought as a separate entity from your mind. Your mind may, you know, be paying attention to your arm, or your leg. If that is the case you simply say "My focus is on my leg or my arm." Just continue to objectify everything that your mind is doing. It is a simple, very simple practice, just the practice of objectification.

Almost like you're describing what your mind is doing as if you're watching it from the third person perspective and describing what it is doing. It's going over here; it goes to that sound; this goes to the sensation of my body. It's going to this thought. Just almost describe what is happening.(finish meditating), As you notice, I may ask you now to open your eyes and see very quickly you can start seeing that as you objectify things in your minds you have distances from them.

You have actually more control over such things. You know they have less ability to control you. As it's very important just like of Jesus, as Christ did, when we are being tempted by such things in our lives, that we can separate them from ourselves and we can know that we are in the subject role and that we can regain and restore and remain in our subject position.

There are many brothers and sisters who write us and are very concerned about their negative pasts. They ask us a lot of questions on how to deal with such things, or maybe negative circumstances in our lives right now. And it's very important when we look at this practice, to objectify. In our lives we may have negative memories or afflictions. We may have, you know certain experiences in our lives but it's very important to learn how to objectify those things.

Then we can use them, not to harm us or to harm anybody else, but to use them almost as fuel for your rocket ship. So that they can propel you forward. But you are not free too hurt other people. Use your experiences as fuel to give you energy. People have done this consistently through history.

Let's take the example of anger. Martin Luther King took the energy of anger, he took that holy anger with in him and he changed that into his dream. He changed that into his dream of seeing his brothers and sisters, white and black being able to stand side by side in harmony in happiness, etc.

He wanted a place where we are equal, where we are fully brothers. He took that anger and changed it into a dream. In the same way to objectify, he had to not to allow that poison into his internal mind environment and use it as power to propel him into a great vision and a great work.

In the same way Nelson Mandela talked about, "Resentment is like drinking a poison and hoping that it will kill your enemy." He talked about this and he said that, "Resentment needs to be transformed into blessing." And in the same way when we are dealing with issues, you know when we resent somebody, who said something bad to us or whatever circumstances.

Let us use that experience as something that gives us power that we can declare in our lives "I'm never going to let myself do what that other person did to me and I'm going to be a blessing to every single person that I meet. I'll do that instead of speaking negatives words to them. I will not do that, I will encourage people. I will try to support people, lift them up. I'll try to help them see their God given destiny."

In a same way we can start changing was we learn by objectifying these mind states, we have to learn transform them into power and into fuel. It's very interesting, my wife gave me an example: Oprah Winfrey said that she could make the excuse that she had a negative childhood and thus she should never be successful. But Oprah Winfrey said that "Because I had a negative childhood, I will succeed."

You see how she turned that around and she didn’t use that as a justification to say, "I'm going to be defeated, I'm not going to rise higher. I'm not going to try any more." But she said because I have that "I'm stronger, I'm going to rise up higher. I'm going to even more successful." In the same way, when we learn how to objectify our minds we regain the subject position in our hearts. We start regaining power in our lives, control in our lives.

And then we start lessening the power of the Archangel in our lives, the people who are trying to curse us; the people who are trying to bring you down; or the circumstances that make you not believe in yourself anymore. So it's very important to learn how to regain our subjectivity in our lives. You know I really find this practice very important because when we are raising our children the learning how to objectify is very important for them as well.

I'll give you an example, my kids were -- I have lots of boys in my house, we have 4 boys -- and you know boys are, they get very loud and make a big ruckus. I remember one episode were my older boy was on a chair and he was about to throw a toy, a very hard toy, you know truck, and my other boy, because they are arguing about something, and my other boy on the floor was swinging a sword at him saying, "You want to throw that truck?" (Laughter in audience)

I saw that circumstance and normally how a parent would deal with that circumstance would be to say, "You children what are you doing? You're bad, bad, bad children. Stop that!" But we use the practice of objectification, when that situation was playing out we said, "Ooohhh, wait! I see a boy, a very angry boy on the chair about to throw a truck. And I see a boy on the ground swinging a sword."

See, once we objectify that, they will realize, they drew pictures in their minds of what was happening. They caught up with their emotions. Without objectification they couldn't see themselves, but when we objectified for them and said, "Hey, I see a very angry boy on the chair about to throw a red truck and I see another guy swinging a sword at him saying, 'Come on, come on.'"

Once we did that, they were able to see themselves and think, "Wait a minute, we don't like that, that's not us. We will quit that." Once we did that we allowed them to objectify, allowed them see themselves once more from a third party perspective sort of. And then of course, at that time we asked them, "Hey, do you think this is what the loving brothers would do to each other?" and they said "No, we had a nice time out." (Laughter) And all things came back to peace.

You know in our lives it's so important that we learn this practice. We need it in your lives if you’re a husband or wife or if you're a spouse, I heard a story from a man -- he told me a story that every husband has and he calls it, "The terror of the red shoes". Now let me describe that to you a little bit. This husband was describing to me, "Hey, we're preparing some event and my wife is trying on different shoes or a different outfit she's wearing and she’ll ask me, "Hey which shoes I should wear, the black ones or the red ones?"

And for a man this is very a hard question. (Laugh from the audience). We don't know how to answer! So he said, "Err, honey the red one is good." And she said, "What's wrong with the black ones?" (Laughter) And he said, "Well, ok, the black one’s are good then." And she said, "You just said the red one were good!" (More laughter) And they got into a fight, an argument. That is not what he intended. But that's not how we’re supposed to approach that situation. See we learn to objectify, we will be able to deal with the situation in a better manner.

So let’s say we are in that situation. I practice on myself so I can testify to its effectiveness. So if my wife will asked me, "Ok, we have this big occasion and True Parents will be there and all of the member’s of the True Families will be there, so which one should I wear?" So well, I practice in my mind, objectifying, describing the situation, "Well I see a beautiful women, I see her with a black skirt on and a blue top, I see this kind of earrings, and I see that red lips so if you want to match the red you got to the red shoes. But if you want the black shoes to pick up your beautiful black hair and your bag then do the black shoes." (Laughter)

And then I’ll ask her too, "What do you think yobo?" And I said, "Well I was leaning toward the black shoes." And I say "Well that's a great choice." (Much laughter in the audience) "Black shoes are great choice." You see we've got to learn how to use the practice in our day to day lives. And it's very important that we learn to objectify such things. Learn the practice of objectification -- it gives you more control in your life and it to allows you the ability to describe your situation so that we can actually make better decisions.

I was at the plane and going to Japan. And right next to me, we always ride in economy -- so we were sitting there, right next to me, these young couples, young Korean couples came, traveling to Japan and they were in 20's. And they were hugging and focusing with each other the whole trip! The whole trip they were holding hands and in their blankets, you know and whatever. So I'm sitting there trying to focus on my book reading.

And you know I objectified this picture. You know ok, I'm going to start to see this from a heavenly perspective. I’m going to see this from the top perspective. And I thought, "Ok I see a loving couples," and one thing surprised me quite a lot, when, to such an extent that, I really had to look at myself. When meal came out, as you all know, as the meal time comes there is a little package in which your silverware is in. You have to open it, you have to open it up, and set your table.

So when the stewardess brought the meal, the young man proceeded to open his wife's or girlfriend’s package and lay out her silverware. I look it and said, "Come on! She’s not going to melt if she touches her silverware." (Laughter) So I was sitting there and thinking, "Ok. maybe when they are together focusing on each other, actually when I travel with my wife we're pretty much focused on each other, we're talking to each other the whole trip.

But I realized that I don't set the table for her. (Laugh) When the food comes I don't open the packet and set her table for her. So I let that moment be an inspirational moment. And I tried to say ok, "You know God is trying to tell me something. He is trying to ask me to rise higher. He's trying to ask me to become a better husband." So the next time we flew to Japan I was thinking, "Ok, when I get back home I'm going to set my wife's table. (Laughter) I'm going to set a feast before her!" (Laughter and applause)

Father said, we have to honor our wife like a queen and she will then honor us back as a king. So let's do that and our honor God as blessed couples. So I talked to her, "Yobo, I'm going to honor you when I get back. I was inspired by the young couple in the plane. I'm going to set the table when I go back." (Laugh) I did. I got home and did that and she said a really wonderful encouraging thing, she didn't hear the sermon but she said, "Yobo, you are my king and I'm you're queen."(Laughter and applause)

You know it's so important because in life, there’s many opportunities for us to miss what are we suppose to see. I was also in the airport when I was standing in this really long line. There were about hundred people, the line was moving so slowly and I was getting frustrated, it was just so frustrating. And I realized, I looked up a read the sign and I noticed that it was the connections line and not the arrival line. I'm in Japan and I had to get off in that airport to arrive and I have to get out, and I'm standing in the wrong line.

I was getting frustrated because the line was long. I was aggravated because the people there didn't understand a word I was saying. But I realized, wait a minute I'm in the wrong line. And the same way I try to use that as an example, God was trying to speak to me and he said, you know, we have the same problem, we have to learn how to arrive where God is trying to get us. You know sometimes we're trying to get to the arrival line but we're standing in the connection line. It's important to know where we are. We know where our environment is. What is in our environment. The real problem here was that I was not aware of my environment.

I was just following people to where they are going and I was not paying attention the general environment where the sign was said this is the connections and this is the arrivals. In the same way in our mind, it is so important that we learn to be aware of the environment of our mind. So that we will know that we are not in the connection line. We will know that we are arriving every moment, where God wants us to be. Every moment we need to know where God wants us. Wherever it is, whatever the circumstance or obstacle -- or things with our kids -- or things with our spouse -- or whatever we need to be where God wants us.

We can rise to higher level. There are so many opportunities if take advantage of so that we can rise higher in our lives. You know, if we learn anything from today. Let's remember that it is so important to regain subjectivity in our lives. It's so important that we learn how to protect our internal self. Remember that ‘Sok Saram’ the internal self and ‘Kut Saram’ the internal self. Let's protect ourselves. Don't let any person who opposes you or any circumstance take you down. Feed your environment because otherwise your inner-self will start being nourished by that negative environment.

It's very important that we protect our environment. We fill our mind-environment with life filling words, life filling thoughts, fill them with faithful words. We fill them with practice so that our lives can become greater and greater. Just like Jesus and the Buddha, let's learn to objectify, lets learn to rid ourselves of things that are negative.

Take ourselves out of negative environments so we can have a strong and healthy environment where our inner-self can grow. If we learn how to objectify situations we will create more peace. We will learn how to see things from a better perspective. We will not always get caught in the emotions of events. But learn how to see things from a little bit of a distance, so we can step back, notice them and be able to make positive decisions in our lives.

Let's make sure that we don’t stand in that connections line, be aware of our mind environment. Know where your mind is. Stay aware of arriving where God wants us to arrive. If we can do that, I do believe that we will always rise higher. To more Victory, to more Illuminations and to more Peace.

Brother and sisters, can you receive this message today?

Yes (from the audience)

Thank you so much!!!

Let's recite today:

"True Parents I have repented for my wrong doings. Make me a holy palace of your peace, your love and your lineage."