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Chapter 4 Education through Life
Life to Perfect the Four Great Realms of Heart
We human beings are born to travel through the world of love. We are born to travel in the universe of love. At the moment I inherited my mother and father’s bloodline, I participated at the center of their love for each other. So I received love from the time I was conceived. My parents loved me as I grew in my mother’s womb. During the months my mother carried me, I could feel her constantly. After I was born my parents loved me. I was in the realm of my parents’ love all the time I was growing up, when I went to school and then to college. A mother and father love their sons and daughters more than anything, and when they cannot provide for them the way other parents do, it causes them great pain. Only when the children have a son or daughter themselves can they say, “Now I know what my parents did for me.” When the parents have to go away to work, leaving their children behind, do you think they sleep comfortably or spend their time peacefully? When you understand that their minds are always anxious and uneasy over their children, you will realize what amazing people your parents are. This is love. At around age sixteen we are on the verge of maturity. Just a little later, around eighteen or twenty, we are ready to marry. This begins another cycle of love. We marry, and in the early years we have sons and daughters, and we love them. And when our children marry, we love our grandchildren. (11, Section 4, Chapter 4, Book 4, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
We human beings come into this world through love. After growing up in love, we are to connect to another dimension of love. This is because we leave the love of our parents to find love with our life partner. We can call living in the love of our parents, formation-stage love, and conjugal love, growthstage love. Yet, no matter how much a couple may love each other, their love is not complete until they have children. This is why couples want to have children; it is to know completion-stage love. Therefore, the core of human life is to go through the course of love — love from our parents, love for our spouse and love for our children. This is the fundamental path of love, to realize the ideal of God’s creation. The purpose of a true love family is not only for the family but is also to build the kingdom of heaven. To achieve the goal of oneness throughout the universe, a family must expand its purpose to the people, nation, world and cosmos. It must go out all the way to the world and then return. (2, Section 1, Chapter 3, Book 3, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
True love is attained through life experience and is understood through the spiritual senses. True love is not something that can be mastered through words, writings or general education. Its complete attainment comes only by living it. In their process of growing from infancy, Adam and Eve were supposed to reach perfection by experiencing and understanding in daily life, through their spiritual senses, the heart of true children, the heart of true brother and sister, the heart of true husband and wife, and the heart of true parents, step by step. When they experienced the whole of God’s true love, then for the first time the world would have seen ideal people who had perfected the purpose of creation. (47, Section 3, Chapter 2, Book 3, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
Thus, when the standard of the perfected four realms of heart within the family is projected onto higher and higher levels, the ideal of unity becomes a reality. On that basis, we can enter a cosmos of peace, happiness and freedom. This is why we have a vital need for family harmony centering on the unity of mind and body and man and woman. God too has been growing, you see. He created Adam and Eve as the substantiation of the ideal within His invisible heart, of son and daughter, brother and sister, husband and wife and father and mother. With Adam and Eve, God becomes a growing child, a brother and a sister, a husband and a wife, and finally a parent. As God establishes children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives and parents, God experiences His second self many times over. God unites them in true love, which brings boundless joy to Him. (6, Book 1, Pyeong Hwa Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
Nurturing Heart of Husband and Wife
Please realize that the position of husband and wife is the union between a son of God and a daughter of God, the union of a brother and sister within God’s family and the union of a father and mother. From the perspective of the four realms of heart, the position of husband and wife is the absolute goal of human life, through which we can actually achieve the perfection of our individual selves. The husband, therefore, stands in the position that enables the wife to receive an ideal son of God, to receive an older brother of heaven, to receive a husband of heaven and to receive a father of heaven. This is also true of the wife in relation to her husband. Such husbands and wives bear children in a manner analogous to God’s act of creation, and they feel joy through experiencing their own growth in a substantial manner through their children. God’s love is absolute. Accordingly, it is a principle of heaven that the relationship of husband and wife cannot be broken. (6, Book 1, Pyeong Hwa Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
Love is unique; it is only one. Love is unique and absolute. Since this is the love we desire, each husband has to engage his wife through absolute sex. It is undeniable that heaven comes to a husband through the encounter with his wife. A husband may walk a tortuous path, but unless he seeks the path of love and its righteousness, he cannot enter heaven. The person who comes to introduce heaven to the husband is the wife, and vice-versa. The day the couple splits apart is the day heaven disintegrates. It is also the day the couple’s original ideals and dreams shatter into nothingness. (6, Section 5, Chapter 2, Book 8, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
We are born in love, live in love and, as God’s representatives, give birth to sons and daughters through love. Eventually, we reach the resting place of love and return home so that we may live eternally in God’s presence. In other words, our lives begin in love, ripen in love and are finally harvested as the fruit of love. When a person dies, he or she harvests the fruit of love. During our life, we receive the love of our parents, share love with our husband or wife, and give love to our children, bringing to fruition all the seeds of God’s love sown in the internal world of love. Eventually, we harvest this fruit and go into the next world. When we become completely one in love, we come to resemble God. If a husband and wife work together to complete the three stages of love and then go to the spirit world, they will exist as creators in a reciprocal relationship with God, who is the eternal subject partner. That is what happens when a husband and wife die centering on love. We begin and end in God. (16, Book 3, Pyeong Hwa Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
In the ideal world to come, when married couples walk together happily side by side, all single people will have to greet them with respect. That time is coming. We must create a social atmosphere in which husbands and wives who have attained complete oneness are honored and praised. It should be so especially for couples who are blessed. Wherever they go in society, people should respect, honor and praise them. (14, Section 2, Chapter 4, Book 11, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
Showing an Example as Parents
As a couple, we should be able to show our sons and daughters an example of how a husband and wife should live. Our children should be inspired to say, “Our father and mother have such a good relationship. I want to marry as soon as possible and live the way they do.” It is the father and mother who should be able to teach the children how to lead their lives. Everything depends on the father and mother. (17, Section 4, Chapter 4, Book 5, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
Parents need to educate their children about how to practice true love. Everything I’m saying relates to the family. Husband and wife should maintain purity of mind and body and attain oneness of heart. Then they must educate their children about true love by their example. Will children obey a father who is a drunkard and physically abuses their mother? Will children obey a mother who habitually deceives and lies to their father? Parents need to educate their children about true love through their own actions. It’s not just education but education by example. I’m saying the way to educate your children about true love is by practicing it first. Educate by example. Write this as your family motto, frame it and mount it on the wall. Write it with a heart of profound devotion. (25, Section 1, Chapter 4, Book 11, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
We’ve been living and speaking carelessly in our family life, but from now on we should establish rules in the family. Parents should not beat their children in anger. They should not berate them with curse words as are commonly spoken in the world. We all must now become as one body. Our words, our attitude and our way of life should be as members of one body, with God as the center. (2, Section 1, Chapter 4, Book 11, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
God’s Will is to realize the family kingdom of heaven. Your sons and daughters are the most frightening beings in the world. They learn from your behavior. Therefore, they are the most frightening beings. If you tolerate and forgive everything, living peacefully, then your children will learn to do the same. It is not easy to be the mother or father of sinless children. (9, Section 3, Chapter 2, Book 10, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
Parents have to be able to represent God. You should say to your children, “Children! Please love your brothers and sisters more than you love me; please love your neighbors, your country and the world more than you love me.” If you educate them in this way, you will stand out as true parents among parents. In this way, your sons and daughters will move forward and your family will develop into a center of greater goodness. (13, Section 3, Chapter 4, Book 5, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
We must make sure that our children never hear us say, “Our parents fought” during their entire lives. If they hear us say, “Our parents fought a lot,” they will feel pain no matter how well we get along. Your sons and daughters should say, “Our father is God’s representative. He is the god of our family. Our father is the president of our family. Our father is the saint of our family. Our mother is the same.” In the past, saints said, “when all is well in the family, everything else goes well”, but what the Unification Church advocates is ‘cosmos.’ It means that you should harmonize with heaven centered on the cosmos. (October 28, 1978）
Loving Children
Parents live for their children. Parents who assert that they live for their own sake cannot be considered parents. From now on, the principles of morality should be established based on the Principle of the Unification Church. How should parents live? Parents should live for the children to whom they gave birth. Among the principles of morality, this is the first rule. No lengthy explanation is needed. It is simply because parents want to do so. The position of parents is a position in which they find happiness and joy in living for their children. (7, Section 2, Chapter 4, Book 11, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
In loving their children, parents do not announce, “Parents should be like this,” and love their children according to certain theories. Parents do not assert themselves but deny themselves. That is, they love their children without regard for position. In other words, parents do not love their children based upon their authority as parents, and always and only from this imposing position. Instead they take a higher stance by loving their children without a bit of concern for their status of authority. This is the heart with which parents love their children. (10, Section 2, Chapter 2, Book 3, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
The way a father should relate to his children is to become their best friend. Then even when his children are playing with their playmates, they will run to him as soon as he appears. Also a father should become his children’s best teacher. His children must be able to say, “My Dad is better than the president; he is the best and is second only to God,” and, “I will never exchange my father for any friend. I will never exchange my father for any teacher. And I will never abandon my father, even if it means losing my loving wife. (9, Section 2, Chapter 4, Book 11, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
A mother offers her body for her child, and then forgets her investment. There is no mother who remembers how she gave and shared her flesh and blood. While she is nursing her baby, a mother does not keep a record in a notebook, writing, “Today I gave the baby this many milliliters of milk.” She invests and forgets, invests and forgets. The way a mother raises her child is the same way God created all things, by investing and forgetting, investing and forgetting; the two are exactly the same. (28, Section 1, Chapter 1, Book 3, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
What are children? Through our children, God educates us and lets us feel how much He loves us. Through our children, we can also understand the joy God felt when He created Adam and Eve. When our children are born, we feel love and joy, and we come to know how God felt when He created our human ancestors. Because we need to learn how to love children the way God does, we need to have children. (1, Section 3, Chapter 3, Book 5, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
Does someone instruct parents on how to love their children? You women gathered here, when your babies were born, did you have to be taught how to love them? Is there a school somewhere that teaches love? There is no such school, but everyone attains a perfect score in this. The more you feel your love is not enough, the closer you are to perfect love. That which is perfect does not need to be learned or improved. That which does not need adjustment is completed. That which is complete does not change, and that which does not change goes on for eternity. (44, Section 3, Chapter 2, Book 3, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
The Dutiful Way of Filial Peity
Even in this fallen world, a mother who loves her children invests in them and then repeatedly forgets how much she has given; she serves and sacrifices for their sake, hoping they will do well. Even though her child fails to attain success, until her dying moment she wants to continue to invest. This is the love of a mother. That is how it is even in this fallen world. When children come to know their mother was like this, they will go to her grave and tearfully ask her to forgive their unfilial behavior. Even though it is too late, they will repent, resolving to turn around 180 degrees and fulfill their duty to her. This filial piety is not a way of clever strategies or methods. This is the way of love, of truly sacrificing and offering one’s flesh and blood. (7, Section 2, Chapter 2, Book 3, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
Parents cannot teach their children filial piety just by words. They have to inspire a filial attitude within their children. The child cannot learn this overnight. It requires a long period of consistent influence. Parents should set an example in daily life that inspires their children to emulate them. They should be experts at inspiring this practice of filial piety, based on God’s Will. (4, Section 3, Chapter 4, Book 5, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
The way of love opens to us only when we sacrifice for others. After parents love their children, they do not say, “We raised you for twenty years and sent you to school, so now, according to the principle of restoration through indemnity, you have to sacrifice for twenty years for us.” No. Parents sacrifice for their children without considering or calculating the extent of it. In fact, the harder they work for their children, the more their children’s love for them grows. Even though parents ask no compensation, their children’s original mind cannot but love them. That is why children whose parents loved them are never unfilial. It is impossible for a child to be unfilial to such parents. In a family of sacrificial parents, filial children will emerge. The more a nation’s king sacrifices for his subjects, the more loyalty they will display to him. On the path of love, sacrifice and suffering do not diminish your value. Instead, they double it. Such is the path of love. (14, Section 2, Chapter 3, Book 3, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
Siblings’ Love
Centering on parental love, the tradition and order of love for the person in the position of the elder brother is to sacrifice himself for and love his younger siblings, as his parents’ representative. The eldest brother’s position comes with the responsibility to suffer more than any of his siblings, for the sake of his parents and siblings. That is the eldest brother’s situation. The parents suffer for the sake of their children more than the children do. They do so because of their love. The parents will not give up, even when they are drenched in tears. They will continue along that path of tears. (17, Section 3, Chapter 3, Book 5, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
Why do we need brothers and sisters? It is so that a brother, by looking at his younger and elder sisters, can understand, “Oh, that’s how our mother was as she grew up!” Through them he sees the process of his mother growing up. Also, a sister observes carefully how her elder or younger brother grows up to understand how her father grew up and lived. This is the love among siblings; you become one by growing up like this. That’s the value of loving your brothers and sisters. (1, Section 5, Chapter 2, Book 3, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
Our parents desire that we love our siblings more than we miss our parents. Thus if siblings fight in the name of filial piety, it cannot be regarded as filial piety. The heart of parents desires that children care about one another more than they love their parents. Even if you are temporarily unable to serve your parents, if you say, “Mom, please wait. I will come to you after taking care of my younger brother first,” your mother will say to you, “My boy! You will grow up to be a good man.” Those who want to love their brothers and sisters more than their parents will live eternally in heaven. Those who can’t love their brothers and sisters as they would their parents will be excluded. When you understand the basis of this principle, it is simple. Yet because we human beings have not known this, we have been unable to love one another. The question is whether we, as family members, can unite among ourselves. Thus if you stand in a position where you cannot fulfill your filial duty to True Parents, you should instead offer the devotion you want to give True Parents to the members of your church family. Heaven will accept your offering as having greater value than your filial devotion to True Parents. Those who practice this will surely be blessed. (2, Section 2, Chapter 4, Book 11, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
A family includes parents and the children growing up under their care. Each child has his or her own unique character. Since the children share a common root in their parents’ love, each of them can express a unique perspective. Even the youngest child can assert an opinion and not be ignored by the older brothers and sisters. Why can’t they ignore the younger one? It is because their assertion is based on their parents’ love. Since even the youngest child is united in love with his or her parents, the elder siblings need to acknowledge his or her opinion. They should support that child so that his or her opinion is welcomed. This is family life. (13, Section 3, Chapter 3, Book 5, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
The more brothers and sisters you have, the better. No matter how many you have, if there is only one bowl of rice, you should share it with them. Siblings must not fight over a bowl of rice. However difficult life may be with many siblings, if they think with a loving heart, “Even if I starve, I’m going to give my portion to my sister,” all will be well. Would you want to wear good clothes and give the shabby ones to your younger siblings? We need to think in a way opposite from Satan’s world. Blessed children ought to think differently from the children of Satan’s world. (5, Section 2, Chapter 4, Book 11, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
Family is a School of Love
In life, the family is the most important school of love. Through education in love and spiritual sensitivity, which only parents can accomplish, a child develops his capacity of heart. This is the cornerstone of the formation of the child’s personality. Moreover, the family is the school for the education of children in virtue. The heavenly way is for people to receive academic education, physical education and technical education on the foundation of having received education in heart and virtue. Even though parents may not be aware that they are true teachers, children naturally learn from and resemble their parents. The role of parents is that important. Children’s loving personalities and spirituality develop as they emulate the true love and loving lifestyle of their parents. (17, Book 5, Pyeong Hwa Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
What is the family? It is the place in which to train the heart. You train your heart with love at the center. In school you learn to relate to others with affection, as you would your own siblings. In the nation, too, you can then relate to others with affection. The education you receive from your parents will be important for you in school and in the nation. Parents have to pass on everything having to do with the heart to their children. They need to create a foundation of heart for their children, and teach their children to live as they have lived, giving specific guidance on how to live in the family, in society and in the nation. (14, Book 4, Pyeong Hwa Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
The family is the only institution created by God. It is the school of love where people can learn how to love each other and live together in peace, and it is the training center where we practice how to build a palace of peace in the world. It is where we learn how to become a husband or wife who will live for the sake of our spouse and how to become a husband and wife who will travel on the eternal path of love. The family is the base camp for world peace, and it must be such that the children will say, “We have never seen our mother and father fight. (P207, As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen)
Parents are like a second God to their children. If you ask your young children, “Whom do you like better—God or Mommy and Daddy?”—and they say they like their mom and dad better, then that means they also like God. The most precious education takes place in the family. You won’t find happiness and peace in some other place. The family is intended to be the Kingdom of Heaven. It would not matter if a person possesses incredible wealth and fame or even possesses the whole world. If all is not right with that person’s family, then he cannot be happy. The Kingdom of Heaven begins in the family. If a husband and wife are bound together in true love and they build an ideal family, this will connect directly with the world. (P207, As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen)
It doesn’t matter if a husband and wife come from different races or cultures. If they have formed a family after having received God’s love, then there can be no conflicts of culture among the children born into this family. These children will love and value the culture and tradition of their mother’s country and father’s country with the same love they have for each parent. Resolving conflicts in multicultural families is not a matter of providing them with particular knowledge. Instead, it is a matter of the parents of these families raising their children in true love. The parents’ love soaks its way into the flesh and bone of the children and becomes the fertilizer that enables the children to accept their mother’s country and father’s country as one and become wonderful citizens of the world. (P224, As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen)
The family is the school where love for humanity is taught and learned. When children who are raised in the warm love of their parents go out into the world, they will care for people in difficulty in the manner they learned in their home. People raised in loving relationships with their own brothers and sisters will go into society and share their caring hearts with their neighbors. People raised in love will look upon each person they meet in the world as a member of their own family. The starting point toward a true family is the heart of love that treats strangers as family and shares with them. Another reason the family is important is that it expands to become the world. A true family is the basis for forming a true society, true nation, and true world. It is the starting point toward a world of peace that is God’s Kingdom. Parents will work for their children until their bones melt way. They are not working just to feed their own children, however. A person whose heart overflows with love is capable of working for the sake of others and God. The family is where we receive so much love that it overflows from our hearts. The family protects its members in its embrace, but its function is not to prevent love from getting out. In fact, the love in the family should overflow into the surrounding community. No matter how much love may overflow, the love in the family will never go dry. This is because it is received from God. The love we receive from God is such that we can continue to dig it out but never see the bottom. In fact, the more we dig, the more love wells up like pure spring water. Anyone who has been raised in this love can lead a true life. (P224, As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen)
Living Together
In a family there are parents, husband and wife, sons and daughters; and there are surely other relatives living around you. Family members include grandfather and grandmother, mother and father, husband and wife and sons and daughters. It is not mere words that unite them. It is not money that draws them together, nor the necessity of living and eating together. Sharing the same house does not guarantee that family members will get along well. It is mutual affection, no matter who is older and who is younger, that allows them to overcome the difficult challenges of life together, in unity. Vertical and horizontal, left and right, front and back; within a family all these relationships are harmonized through the love not only of mother and father, of husband and wife, of brothers and sisters, but also of grandparents and grandchildren. The family with love as its core is the foundation upon which each of its members bonds with others, moves and acts. A family is based on love. (2, Section 1, Chapter 1, Book 5, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
A family is not necessarily good just because it has a good house and good surroundings. No matter how shabby a family’s house or environment may be, a good family is one that will cherish it as a haven of rest and build ties of love that endure despite all of life’s challenges. There you will find the heart of parents and children who live for each other. This heart becomes the original hometown of memories and provides the motivation that directs our lives. It is the basis of our happiness. Why is that so? It is because there is a singular tie of love between parents and children. It is a lineal bond of love that no one can replace or invade. There the love of parents and brothers and sisters becomes our motivating force. Our family members are the dearest to us in our everyday lives. (10, Section 1, Chapter 1, Book 5, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
The family sets the pattern for living together in harmony. The family wherein parents and children love and respect each other, husband and wife are grounded in mutual trust and love, and brothers and sisters trust and rely on each other, and all live together as one, is the model ideal family. This means that you need to establish a true family wherein the stem of true love emerges from the root of true love and bears the fruit of true love. (12, Book 4, Pyeong Hwa Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
Everyone would rather have laughing parents than weeping parents at home. They would rather live with siblings who know how to laugh. Then where can we find such parents and siblings who laugh? We do not find it in families that revolve around worldly spouses and parents, but in families that revolve around the Parents of all humankind and the entire world. Where will we find the standard for families that can represent the world and all nations? If there is an absolute deity, He, just as much as anyone else, is most likely searching for a family standard of absolute peace. (3, Section 3, Chapter 2, Book 10, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
God is not someone to fear. He is the one closest to us. If you meet God, even if you ride on His back and pull His hair, He will enjoy it. It is as when a beloved grandson grabs his grandfather’s hair and climbs on his back; the grandfather enjoys this. God is our Parent, is He not? When you know this, He is not someone to fear. He is the one closest to me. God is closer than a parent, closer than a husband, closer than a son. When I come to know God as the one who is closest and most precious to me and who will live with me forever, then everything goes well. (6, Section 1, Chapter 2, Book 3, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
Family of the Realm of Three Generations
I recommend that three generations live together as one family. I do so, not simply because it is a way of maintaining our country’s tradition. When a husband and wife have a child, they pass on all they can to that child. There is a limit, however, to how much the parents can pass on. The parents represent the present and the children the future. The grandparents represent the past. So it is only when the grandparents, parents, and children live together that the children can inherit all the fortune of the past and present. To love and respect your grandfather is to inherit the history of the past and to learn from the world of the past. The children learn precious wisdom from their parents on how to live in the present, while the parents prepare for the future by loving their children. (P212, As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen)
Grandfathers and grandmothers love their grandchildren even more than they do their sons and daughters. Those of you who know your grandmother, don’t you receive more love from her than you do from your mother and father? If you ask what a grandmother’s desire is, it is to cherish her grandsons and granddaughters. For the grandparents, grandchildren in their home bring to mind images of the things they did, from the time they were children until they were teenagers, when they were married, and when they had their children. They can review the entire course of their early life through their grandchildren. When we become grandparents or great-grandparents, our lives start to branch out in as many directions as we have descendants. These descendants will be interconnected in the love they inherit from us. The more there are, the greater the blessing. They are born from love; their lives flow forth through love. The course of life is the succession of generations according to the way of love. Undeniably, we are born for love. (12, Section 4, Chapter 4, Book 4, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
To have a healthy household, your grandmother and grandfather, mother and father, you and your spouse, and your children all need to live in harmony. You need to attain harmony and unity with one another. So the question is, how can you unite? If each of you serves yourself, you separate from one another. When eight family members live together and want to unite, what do they need to do? The grandfather and grandmother need to serve the whole. If they try to serve themselves, eight factions will arise. The way to become one is to serve one another. The grandmother needs to serve the grandfather, and the grandfather needs to serve the grandmother. The father needs to serve the mother, and the mother needs to serve the father. The husband needs to serve his wife, and the wife needs to serve her husband. Also, among the children, the elder needs to serve the younger, and the younger, in return, needs to serve the elder. This is the simple secret to making unity. If you create bonds by serving one another, peace will come to your household. (17, Section 3, Chapter 2, Book 10, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
The first manifestation of God is your grandfather and grandmother, the second is your parents and the third is your sons and daughters. We must love our sons and daughters as we love God. Even worldly parents do that. Parents want their children to love each other, without fighting, more than they love their parents. While receiving parental love, children should love each other with even more love. We should match our father and mother’s standard in our own lives, and think we will live even more admirable lives than they have. We should try to lead happier lives than our ancestors did. This is the standard. Those who lead their lives in this way can go to the kingdom of heaven. In the Garden of Eden, there were no means of instruction. However, we now have the original texts by which to teach the heavenly way. Unless we become the royal family of the kingdom of heaven, we cannot enter that original kingdom of heaven. The family is the living environment and platform upon which we can teach the contents of the original textbook. (5, Section 3, Chapter 3, Book 5, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
Loving Family and Loving the World
The family is absolutely indispensable to bring love into the universe. It is through learning in our families how to love our parents that we become capable of loving people of the same age as our parents. It is when we have the experience in our families of loving our grandfathers and grandmothers that we become capable of loving people of their age. It is only when you love your husband’s sisters that you can love people similar to them; and only when you honor your husband’s younger and older brothers that you can honor people similar to them. That is the only way that you can come to love all people. (10, Section 3, Chapter 1, Book 5, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
The system in the ideal world is based on the family unit. The family is the foundation for the kingdom of heaven; it is the cornerstone, the foundation on which to build that kingdom. It does not matter how many people there are; if you love them as your family you are welcome everywhere in the kingdom of heaven. That is why you should base your life on the education you receive in your family. In the family are grandfathers and grandmothers, father and mother, husband and wife, and sons and daughters. These represent four generations. We can apply this wherever we go throughout the world. We will meet people the age of our grandparents, the age of our parents, the age of our spouse, and the age of our children. Therefore, those who have experienced love according to the textbook in their family will have no problem wherever they go. Since their way of life accords with the book, they will pass every test. The time will come when everyone will provide food and lodging to those who are living like this. All that matters is this education in the family. That is why I am saying the family is absolutely the most fundamental textbook. If you live according to the way you were taught in the family, no matter where you go, you will not face any barriers and no one will oppose you. (7, Section 2, Chapter 4, Book 5, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
You need to build bonds within your family that will empower you to broaden your love for one another inside and outside the family. Your love within your family is the encapsulation of your love for your nation and the world. Thus, within your family you need to receive training in heart. The way of the heart will become your essential way of life, and you will assimilate the heart that is eager to fulfill God’s Will. Then you can apply that heart to your tribe and to your nation. (6, Section 3, Chapter 1, Book 5, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
Is yours a family in which the father and mother, the couple and the children are united in unchanging love? Is your family a treasure that the universe cannot continue without, a family everyone aspires to emulate? If we expand such a family horizontally, we create a tribe that God can love and cannot release. Yet even if we expand that foundation to a people and a nation, that nation is not enough. We need the world, and even that is still not enough. We cannot reach perfection unless we reach the stage of governing by the authority of the love that connects and unites the spirit world with the earthly world. If we do not reach that stage, there is no way for humanity to be liberated. (30, Section 4, Chapter 1, Book 5, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)
In an ideal society or nation, everyone will transcend nationality and skin color to engage in mutual cooperation, create harmony, and live in happiness. The community will be like an extended family. People will be conscious of being the sons and daughters of one God, a single brotherhood and sisterhood under the True Parents. That will be the place where blessed families, who have restored their lineage, right of ownership and realm of heart, will realize a world of freedom, peace and unity. It will be a world of True Parents’ language and culture. People will be interdependent and prosperous, sharing universal values and God’s culture, which is based on heart. As true owners, people will find ways to stop polluting the earth’s environment and to love and protect all things. In that world, people will generate their livelihood in joyful service and act based on a heart that lives and loves for the sake of others. All of society’s members will follow this standard of living. These ideals are impossible to achieve without the implementation of True Parents’ thought, the thought that teaches that true love is living for the sake of others. (7, Section 4, Chapter 2, Book 10, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk)