As
I was preparing for my blog to be published on Monday I received the news that
the one person who taught me how to love myself had passed to the spiritual
world. My life-long spiritual teacher,
the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, has ascended on
Sunday, September 02, 2012 (Korea time Monday morning 9-3-12) after weeks of
illness. Considering his age of 93, it
was still a shock and will take some time to digest and mourn.
Rev.
Moon has impacted my life profoundly. He
has taught me the love of God as a parent and has been a guiding example together
with his wife; in fact we call them the “True Parents.” Knowing that God loves me, has giving me
confidence, raised my self-esteem, and has shown me how to be responsible for
my life and ultimately for my destiny.
Only
in the love of God can we find acceptance, peace and success. In that experience we discover our true self,
learn all the lessons we are here on earth to learn and can share this love
with others.
“Teacher, which is
the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest
commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your
neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these
two commandments.”
~ Matthew 22:36-40
How
do we learn to love ourselves?
First,
I have to know who I am. I am the child
of God, a spiritual being here on earth to learn to love. I have divine, unique and cosmic value. My spirit is eternal and indestructible. I have nothing to fear.
Man
has been living in ignorance about his true origin; and therefore, has been
conditioned by fear to feel unworthy, weak, and unloved. Rev. Moon teaches about the breach of humans
in the Divine Principle.
“I was teaching them
the motto that I had followed as a young man, which was ‘Before seeking to rule
the universe, first perfect your ability to rule yourself.’ America had great wealth and had become
obsessed with material goods. I stood in
the midst of this material civilization and talked about matters of the mind
and heart. The mind cannot be seen with
the eye or held in the hand. Yet, we
clearly are ruled by our minds. Without
our minds, we are nothing. Then I talked
about true love, God-centered love, which should guide the mind. I said that true freedom can be enjoyed only
when we have a clear understanding of ourselves based on the foundation of true
love and are able to exercise self-control.
I taught them the
value of labor. Labor is not suffering
but creation. The reason a person can
work all his life and be happy is that labor is connected to God’s world. The labor that people perform is nothing more
than taking things that God created and shaping them in different ways. If you think that you are making something to
give to God as a memento, then labor is not something to think of in a negative
way. Many young people were so steeped
in the affluent life provided to them by their materialistic civilization that
they didn’t know the joy of working. So
I taught them to work with joy.”
From the biography of Rev. Moon “As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen”:
I
think these words are also very appropriate for this Labor Day. I was just reading an article by an American
parent who made this observation: It all starts in the family.
Work
builds confidence, self-esteem and eventually character. Work also allows us to discover our life’s
purpose. I am grateful to the Rev. Moon
for his teaching, and most of all showing me how to love myself. Love is not only a noun but a verb which
requires actions. Our father, the Rev.
Moon has been a person of action all his life and never in his wildest dream
thought of “retiring.” Now God has
called him home, and I pray that he can find peace in the bosom of God while
continuing his work from the heavenly realm.
His wife, Hak Ja Han Moon, our true mother, together with their children and all of us will carry on the work to build the "heavenly kingdom." I will miss him very much.
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