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As a rule, people prefer new things. Where does that trait come from? It can be traced all the way back to God. Of course, the creation itself is not new' for it has been here millions of years. The person you saw yesterday will still have the same eyes and face today. But knowing that others like new things and you are the same old person, you can add a new gesture or a new look.
We often want to change our environment or add something new in our lives. We don't want to stay in the same place, but to go to new places. People in the countryside like to visit the city, while city dwellers like to visit the country. The person living on high ground likes to come down lower sometimes. All these urges to move around come from our human desire for newness and change.
If a person lives in the same town his whole life, he will probably seek his changes through art' music, and culture. A woman may wear a yellow dress one day and a green dress the next, with all different accessories; in this way she is making effort to look new all the time. We can conclude that it is a human trait to add things to one's environment so that it is not the same all the time.
Today's topic, My New Self, raises the important question of how to renew ourselves every day. As we know, everything exists in reciprocal relationships. Men exist in relationship with women and they both have marked differences. Can you imagine if a man and woman looked just exactly alike, like twins, and they got married? Marrying someone who is exactly like you, with the same personality and everything, could not be very much fun.
The fact that everything exists in reciprocal relationships is an amazing indication of some overall will. How is it that a man can find something new in the same woman day after day? The opposite is also true. For a woman, a man seems constantly new. Men and women each smile and laugh, but in different ways. Looking at them' do you think the man's or the woman's face is more expressive in laughter? Is the skin on a man's face thicker than that of a woman's? I have worked with people all of my life; people are like my "occupation." Therefore. I have noticed that women definitely have a greater variety of laughter and smiles than men. Furthermore, men have a rather limited variety of hairstyles and ways of dressing, while women have no limit! If you watch people yourself' you will notice how women's faces break into many different expressions of laughter and joy, while men show much less facial change.
Men walk in a simple and straightforward way but women have many different manners of walking. If a woman on the street is wearing a tight dress, one can see how many muscles are moving and how much she is swinging and swaying. Furthermore, such a woman will probably be wearing high heels and that will make her motion and rhythm even more noticeable. Why have women's fashions become so varied while men's are more simple? Knowing that a man wants to see something new, a woman wants to show herself in new ways in order to attract attention from her environment and thus make more relationships with other people.
If you look through a man's attaché case you will probably find just a few things inside, but a woman's purse is like a department store! I depend on Mother to find me things like a toothpick or nail file, small things I can never seem to find. It amazes me that Mother seems to carry them all the time! She never fails to produce what I need.
I have reflected on whether I really appreciate how Mother tries to be new and fresh for me, and I think I have not given enough attention to that part of her. For myself, I don't like to be bothered with things like wearing a watch but it is a necessity. I have never worn a ring for one entire day; I put one on once but took it off before long. I have seen women with rings on almost every finger. Why would they do that? It is their effort to add new facets to themselves.
We can assume that a person not only likes to express new aspects of himself, but he also expects others to have variety so he won't be bored with them. Since change is an important part of life' it is more valuable that we find ways of changing ourselves rather than expecting others to change for our interest. One person may be able to write articles on a wide spectrum of subjects. We can see that the more varied your ways of thinking and experiences, the more variety you can employ in your descriptions and writing.
Babies grow and change gradually but constantly. I have noticed some distinct changes lately in our youngest daughter Jeung Jin. This morning after Pledge service, she came over to Mother and me and in her own language was elatedly trying to explain something to us. Naturally she assumed we could understand her! I believe that God feels the same way toward man, seeing distinct changes in us.
It is natural for people to want to express something new and original which others have never seen before. This is especially true among married couples. When two people are newly wed they are planning to live with and look at each other for thousands of days into the future yet they both have eyes, nose, mouth, ears and so on. Even so, they are looking forward eagerly to their future together. Contrast the way you would feel if you knew you would have to read the same page in a book over and over again every day in the future. That would be suffocating to even imagine. There is a serious point here. Can a couple be happy if their lives are as monotonous as reading one page over and over?
There is only a limited number of ways in which a woman can make up her face. When God created Adam and Eve, did He anticipate all the things they could do when they grew up? I have studied how people have only four basic elements with which to create the variety of their expressions-eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. It is like having four different kinds of flowers in an arrangement. Every part of the face has a limited number of features. Thus it is difficult to create changes in your appearance, since there is such a limited number of elements available. God must have thought about that.
Literature has described the human features in many different ways, such as "dog's eyes" or "ears like a rose crushed into a rock." I tried to figure out how any ear could look like a rose crushed into a rock and it doesn't make much sense. But the words create a certain image and draw a person into the mood of the author anyway. The human eye is basically simple, but there are thousands of adjectives you can use to describe it. However, all of those adjectives are not enough to describe and appreciate a loving eye. You could describe the hands of your loved one in thousands of different ways and still you couldn't finish the job. People appreciate the variety of expressions about limited things because it expands their own viewpoints.
Imagine a man and woman living together without the element of love. Love is the binding element which allows men and women to stay together, even though they may fight. Let us take a closer look at love. When you wear the eyeglasses of love, things look the way you want them to look. Without love, men and women would fight like savages.
God created you and knows your every part better than you do, so what do you have that is new to present to God? When God created man, did He envision excitement and newness coming from him or did He expect just a simple being? Would God be content with only simple things from life? Today man creates many kinds of things, even toys that sing! God must have envisioned that kind of creative capacity when He created man.
Once you have observed a beautiful yellow flower, you probably won't look closely at it again unless there is something new happening there, such as a bee or butterfly winging around it. How unstable and wobbly a butterfly moves, but still it is lovely. Bees can fly away quickly in an instant, but a butterfly can never buzz away. Butterflies are like clowns in the world of flying!
We can see how God is interested in a world of variety, change and newness. All trees have certain elements in common but there are many different kinds of trees, each of which evoke different feelings in the observer. In the vast oceans there are myriads of small living things in each drop of sea water. Japanese may walk like squirrels, while Americans stride like cranes. Look at the variety of insects living in the grass. Some of them rub their long antennae together and receive sensations in that way. If you watch carefully, you want to know what they are saying to each other! Even God would like to listen in on their love talk.
God is intrigued by all the different reflections of Himself, feeling that even though each person has a different form, in essence we still resemble Him. When springtime comes every person-man, woman, boy or girl-feels like singing, doesn't he? What is it in the spring that makes you feel like singing? The returning birds add their songs to the air and the bees and butterflies are busy everywhere, adding their own joyfulness. Anyone who is watching all this feels drawn into that harmony and feels like singing. Don't beautiful flowers remind you of the one you love? The blooms exist in harmonious pairs and that will give you the urge to express your love in song, as well!
I spoke yesterday about salmon and how the small fish swim to the sea; then four years and thousands of miles later they return to the same river where they were hatched to lay their own eggs. A male and female in a pair lay the eggs, inseminate them and then die together, never leaving each other. Imagine a man and woman marrying, making love just once, and then dying. How intense and serious the couple would be! The behavior of the salmon sounded so amazing that I took an opportunity to study them myself. Sure enough, the fish swim in pairs and the female follows the male exactly. I could understand how serious they would be about their once-in-a-lifetime event. I wondered what a person would choose-whether to make love once and then die, or to live longer but not be able to make love.
How much newness is there in man's love-making? How different is it from the rest of his activities? This is a serious thought. Have you ever thought that love-making was as solemn an event as if your life were at stake? A may fly lives only one day after it hatches so in that day it must mate. In that sense, it is a creature of the air comparable to the salmon of the water. I wonder if there is also an animal living on the ground which has only a short time to live and one chance to mate before it dies.
We have many good reasons to be grateful for being born as men and women. There are many kinds of animals but, for the most part, they all have only one or two mating seasons each year. Are people also restricted to only one season for making love? It is my opinion that if mankind had only one mating season a year and men and women remained separate for the other months, there would be no divorce! Did God make man and woman the way He did so that they could divorce more easily? Certainly not.
Put yourself in God's position and think what He would want for men and women. Would He want people to experience love just once or twice every hundred years, or to feel a new sensation of love every other hour? We resemble God; therefore, God resembles us. How would God want to love man? Would He just look at us or touch us and be satisfied? Maybe God just thinks about love. What would give enough sensation to God that it is a new experience?
As we know from the Divine Principle, God is in the position of subject and the subject always takes an object. Let's assume that God is like a man. Man has the dual characteristics of mind and body. Imagine that the mind says to the body, "I love you," and the body replies, "I love you too." How would they express their love for each other? That is a difficult question.
Does God love, too, or is it only man who loves? Certainly God loves, but how does He love? Would God have sons and daughters when He makes love, just as man does? That's a point to think about! God is a being without form so He can be anywhere, such as within your body or in the creation. Where is God's home and dwelling place? God dwells right at the center of our minds. The feminine part of God lives in the deepest part of woman's mind. There is deity in both Adam and Eve because God dwells in them; that means they possess deity as the visible God. Thus we say that man, as the visible God, is the dwelling place of the invisible God.
God created Adam and Eve and waited for them to grow up, anticipating that when they were old enough, He would dwell within them and in their love. Adam and Eve were meant to enjoy each other just as God enjoys them, and when they made love, God would have the sensation Himself of making love. Therefore love is the supreme, most holy temple. In true love, there is no place where God is not. Once you meet true love, you will always find God there. You will naturally find the master of true love in the midst of it. When Adam and Eve became perfect. God would dwell in that couple as His visible holy temple.
Since the fall, there has been no more delicate or titillating subject than love, simply because it has become degraded. There should only have been original holy love but the world has never seen or even heard about it. Therefore, the topic of love has usually been an embarrassing one. But there is truly nothing holier than the original love. The original place of love is God's holy palace or temple. Therefore, lovemaking is the most precious act any human can ever do. You have never heard much about that, have you?
You cannot open the gate of your holy palace at your will; only human beings of original love can open the gate to true love. Only the king and queen, true man and true woman, can possess true love. It is through that original, holy love that God's sons and daughters are to be born. This is the true, original purpose of the love organs of men and women. That of the woman is the queen's holy palace of love; the man's is the king's holy palace of love. The love meeting of the king and queen is the supreme event of their lives together.
When men and women make that highest relationship, they are like brothers and sisters of God Himself. Therefore, men and women possess infinite value, kings and queens surpassed only by God. They are that important. Since man and woman are created with that dignity, they yearn for the best in all things and are not satisfied with second-best.
There is nothing you would trade for the one you love. Since God created the whole universe with His supreme ideal in mind, He would not trade the whole universe for His loved ones. The blessed couples of the Unification Church are the first people to have the key to open the holy palace of love. That gate has been tightly closed and no one has ever been allowed access before. God has waited and prepared for thousands of years and finally, through the blessing, you are given the key to open it. It is like a huge tree with many branches, and you are one of those branches. All the flowers are in pairs and they are filled with God's love and joy.
We can readily understand how destructive fallen love is, how people are like miserable thieves who take love and waste it. In today's society, for example, women can go around practically naked but they always wear at least two things-something covering their breasts and something on the bottom. Why do they do that? They are not necessarily modest but something tells them that those parts are too precious to show off.
When a man and woman experience true love together, God immediately visits His holy palace. If you are like the negative pole in electricity, you will always attract the positive pole. At that moment of making love, human beings have God with them-they are God. Thus the Unification Church regards love as the most important, sacred thing, higher than anything else.
Every human being has that most holy palace. Life is perpetual preparation to be worthy of having God dwell with us. We must continually ready ourselves so that at the right moment, God can live within us. Why is a woman a very precious being? She has within herself the holy temple which her king can enter, to rest and enjoy. Unfortunately, many women have lowered their standard of love to that of a mongrel dog. How incredibly far their love has fallen down! They still have original minds which are struggling to pull them out of that abyss, but they are constantly being pulled down.
Do you men also have a precious temple in yourselves? Yes, you do and you must never stain that precious part by ungodly contact with another. Since we are built as a holy temple, we must constantly prepare ourselves to be ready to open the door and welcome the king or queen within. Man and wife are like a flower which produces a seed, their common product. God's deity also resides in that seed. The same elements and nutrition are being distributed from the root. With this true love, equality between man and woman becomes possible. Until that time they are separate and different but in true love, they are truly equal. Do you clearly understand?
God created man and woman to be His final, most precious dwelling place and holy temple. When a man lies down beside his wife, it is truly God the King who is lying beside her. Only the master of love can open the gate of love, no one else. Now you know how God makes love. He is there in the man's and woman's hand; when they are giving true love, God is always there. When God is there, everything is yours; that is the privilege of being with God.
We can make many mistakes but a mistake against holy love is the one which must never be made. Since Satan destroyed the original love, a fallen act is the one sin and crime that can never be excused by anyone.
Reverend Moon has clearly defined the standard of original love and has shown the secret crime of Satan; therefore, Satan will have to pack up and leave this earth. That day is getting nearer and nearer. Now you know where the holiest place of love exists. Both man and woman should cherish this to the utmost; we must live in that way. We can understand how truly heartbreaking it is for God when men and women treat their love as a degraded or unimportant thing.
Since love has been debased, frequent lovemaking has been seen by some as an undesirable thing. But in actuality, that is not true. We must remember that the holy temple of the woman exists for the man and that of the man exists for the woman. They are not there for the individuals but for their spouses. So the most holy place of both the man and woman actually belong to their spouse. Therefore, the individual must not think that he can do whatever he wants with his body; he must preserve it for someone else.
We must straighten out the serious misconception that an individual is born just for himself. Woman is born for man and man is born for woman. Today there are many women who like to believe that they exist only for themselves and not for anyone else; this arrogance brings so much pain to God. A true woman will dig into the deepest place of love within a man and bring it out. In doing that, she fulfills her capacity to assume the same rank as God. A true man will try to make himself completely available for the woman, prepared to give everything of himself to her. Every part of him belongs to her, not to himself.
If you truly know in your deepest mind that what I am saying today is the greatest truth, then a tremendous revolution is now catching fire on the face of the earth. Once this truth settles into the minds of mankind, the most deeply rooted moral problems will be clearly solved and erased. This is what will bring equality among all people and raise up each person to his proper position in the universe. We can understand why man always pursues the highest and best and is not satisfied with second-best. We know why God created people as His sons and daughters and the meaning of true love. All these things can take their proper place within your thinking.
You and your loved one should cherish each other as gods. You must worship your partner as God's own dwelling place. No man or woman will ever dislike being treated as a king or queen; this is what they deserve! Don't you think that would be a happy position? At the holy moment of true love, God bequeaths the whole universe to man. Unless we bring ourselves into that position, we cannot claim our rightful inheritance from God.
Children born out of the pure relationship of love between Adam and Eve belong to Adam and Eve, but they are also God's own children. Since God does not have any form, including a spiritual body, Adam and Eve present themselves as the visible form of God in spirit world. Jesus, in the position of Adam, has a spiritual body but the Holy Spirit, in the position of his spouse, has no spiritual body like God Himself. This is why a man doesn't want to live without a woman and why men and women want to live together forever.
Now we can understand why God made the infinite variety in human nature, as a source of constant excitement for Adam and Eve, to stimulate the pulse of love in their hearts as often and as intensely as possible. When you understand this, you must suddenly realize how much sin you committed in the past and how you degraded yourselves without even knowing it.
The key of your love is one that belongs to you and to no one else. It cannot be transferred to someone else or thrown away. But once you use it wrongly, you cast down into the dungeon of Hell something which, only moments before, was the most beautiful palace in the world. Now you blessed couples know how to conduct yourselves. I must remind you that a woman has no right to criticize her man as worthy or unworthy. If she criticizes man, she is criticizing a part of God. Equally as serious, punishment is certainly due if a man or woman violates the holiness of the spouse. You should not fight, and striking each other is out of the question.
You have learned great new things today and now you must discover your new self. These are the most precious words I have ever given you; they are the deepest words I have spoken up till now. Knowing this, if we could have that holy love just once and then die, we could die without regret. But certainly we can live better than the salmon or may flies and discover a completely new self. When you are the victor in true love, you can proclaim yourself a winner before all the universe and God.
When you look at your spouse with these new eyes, you can discover someone worthy of exciting the universe. of changing the movement of the cosmos. It is not sinful to regard what belongs to woman as the most precious thing next to God, or what belongs to man as the most holy thing next to God. To regard each other in that way is never sinful or degrading; it is only proper. When such a couple passes by, all the single persons will applaud with praise, respect, and love. All things of the universe will rejoice and dance to see such couples.
Do you think such love is possible? It is possible, but it is not easy; it is very difficult. For original Adam and Eve before the fall, it would have been the easiest thing but once a bad mistake has been made, it is hard to get over it. Starting from pure, true love each man and woman would have easily established their true love couple; their first love would have been their eternal love. But now, since many of you have already had a first love, you must make this second love greater than the first; with that viewpoint, the second love is permissible. But if this second, new love is less intense than the first one, it is a crime. In other words, if your love for your God-given spouse is far greater than the love you ever had before, it will cover the mistakes you made in love.
We can conclude that life should be born out of love: we should live with the experience of love and lovemaking, and then go to Heaven in love. The man and woman who live in that way will be the most fortunate and happy. If we live on earth with God as our Parent and then return to Him in spirit world, it is like returning to our homeland: it will not be fearful at all to die. It will only seem appropriate to return to God after our life on earth.
Death is simply losing one's body; everything else remains with us, exactly the same as before. Some animals shed their old skins as they grow. Man is the same- once he completes his growth and becomes perfect, he leaves his body behind like an old skin. He is like the cicadas that sing their love songs all summer and then in autumn fade away.
Now you know that without man, there is no way for woman to go to Heaven; and without woman. there is no way for man to go to Heaven. This is the reason why the blessing is so precious. You are in a most precious position. Understanding this secret of the original creation, you know what has been ailing mankind ever since the fall and how to correct the situation. By your receiving the blessing, the necessary process has begun for couples to return to their original position as the visible body of the invisible God. When I speak about this lofty subject, it inspires you to fulfill your role in the restoration at this time; you feel that the new world is near.
Mankind has hardly known anything about God, the meaning of life, about man and woman, but I have brought you now to this high ground, ready to become the true temples of God. You must realize that because of this, you are standing in the greatest position in history. If you take these words into your life, you will have completely different eyes toward your spouse. Before now, have you ever loved each other as husband and wife with such a high understanding of your love? From now on, will you begin to love in that way?
Now you have the confidence to renew yourselves. Once you have become new, you will have nothing to do with Satan. but be one with God. In the complicated path of restoration, God has worked His way through this tangled world to find you. God will be the intermediary, bringing you together with your spouse and then you will live together. At that point, does it really matter how you look? Would it matter if your spouse had only one foot? After deep toil and suffering as descendants of fallen love, you have come to the point of this new start. Do you think you have the right to a better situation than what you have had? The fact that you now belong to the True Parents is far beyond your own merit; it is more than what you actually deserve.
Men and women have been desperately seeking each other's love throughout history. Now, all of a sudden, you can open your eyes and see your true spouse. No matter how he looks, wouldn't you want to hold his hand? Why did we get married? It is to untangle the long, complicated history of human regret. We marry internationally and untangle the ancient problems between the races. Such marriages can be the literal bridge between the black and white races. Knowing this, you are only too happy to undertake such marriages.
Do you think people have a certain color in spirit world? No, people shine with the brightness of their love. A light bulb contains a tungsten filament which looks black until the current is turned on; at that point, it glows and gives off light. In the same way, a person's value in spirit world is determined by how much he experienced God's love on earth. People glow according to how intensely they have felt God's love.
Through the words of this sermon you will be able to understand many former mysteries and you can become a new self. You can see how we can recreate newness on all different levels-the self, the society, the nation, and the world. Are you truly grateful for what you have received? If I taught you the fundamentals of God's truth, that would certainly be something to be grateful for. But more than just the fundamentals, I have explained the real contents of the truth and also you have been given the environment in which to live it. This is my gift to you. There is no other way you could have come to this point.
Because you have the relationship of true children to the True Parents, there is no way they can refuse your desire to be here. You know how important it is to follow the True Parents and how fortunate you are to have received the blessing. To oppose and deny such parents would be the heaviest mistake. The entire universe would turn against such a disrupter in order to protect its original state.
Now you can start the month of October with this knowledge, making a brand new start and marching courageously toward the goal. Now that you have received this understanding, how many of you have determined to become completely new selves) Thank you. Let us pray.