Covered By Clouds

Covered by Clouds the sun is still there.  Just because it is a cloudy day we all know that the sun will come out again.  I think that is a good analogy for the existence of God.  It is the veil of ignorance that has clouded our understanding of the reality of our Heavenly Parents.

“There is a veil, a covering cast over all nations and all peoples of all nations.  When that veil shall be removed, there will be no more pain, nor weeping, no sighing, no disease, no suffering, no death.”

~ Isaiah 25:7-9






In many ways the sacred scriptures are introducing mankind to the process of ‘seeing’ the truth.  Mankind has now grown to a point where we all have to become aware of the reality of our own spirituality and life in realms of energy as well as in the world of mechanics.

“We must avoid the paralysis of hypersensitivity which will get nothing done because everything virtually offends somebody.”

~ Dr. Ben S. Carson  (American columnist and retired neurosurgeon)

Considering that we are living in the Age of Responsibility, nobody can force us to believe in God.  This freedom has put many of us on a road of exploration to find our own faith in all different directions.

“The mystery schools have long held and protected the ancient wisdom of the world.”

~ Know Thyself – Mystery School 

Throughout the ages mystery schools have transferred knowledge and wisdom which was often suppressed and rejected by the major religions. Some thought processes like atheism  developed denying the existence of a creator all together.  The schools of mysticism are more tolerant to new ideas and consider themselves agnostics.

“Atheists are forgetting the meaning of freedom -- Nonbelievers seek to impose their values by banning Bibles.”

~ Dr. Ben S. Carson

 

We Created Our Own God

Is it too much to assume that we created God in our own image?  With all of our shortcomings and the many wars and disasters going on in the world, we have to ask ourselves: who is responsible for it all?  It is part of our human nature to blame others for our own behaviors.  It is therefore only natural to conclude that God has the same fallen natures as man.  How else can we explain that people are fighting each other, killing, lying, and then accuse God?

“Men create their own suffering, their own sickness, and their own miseries.”

~ Michele Longo O'Donnell, The God That We've Created

None-the-less mankind’s ability to understand internal things has grown throughout human history.  Those who achieved a certain awareness recognize that there is only ONE Jesus and ONE Heavenly Parent, so why is there so much division in religions?

“Because the God in whom you believe isn’t real; the God in whom you believe is made up.  It is a God you created out of thin air, having nothing to do with Ultimate reality.”

~ Neil Donald Walsh,  Tomorrow’s God

Religion and Spirituality

“The new spirituality, the transformation of consciousness, is arising to a large extent outside of the structures of the existing institutionalized religious.”
~ Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

There are numerous teachers today who can guide us into greater spiritual awareness.  Eckhart Tolle and Dr. Wayne Dyer are more recent coaches, while Neville Goddard (1905-1972) and Wallace D. Wattles (1860–1911) lived a while ago.  Here is a list of some modern day spiritual teachers.

“The more you make your thoughts (beliefs) into your identity, the more cut off you are from the spiritual dimension within yourself; many ‘religious’ people are stuck at that level.”

~ Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

Religion and Science

God is the UltimateScientist.

“Humanity, through religion, has followed the path of searching for internal truth, and through science, has followed the path of seeking external truth. Religion and science, each in their own spheres, have been the methods of searching for truth in order to conquer ignorance and attain knowledge.”

~ Divine Principle – Introduction

Mankind is hard wired to believe in God. Neuroscientists have found and measured chemical changes in the brain when a person is going through religious or spiritual experiences and keep coming back for more.

“In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too: to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment: to toe that line.”

~ Henry Thoreau,  (1817-1862) American Poet and Philosopher

Conclusion

We live in a world of cause and effect.  Even those who believe in the “big bang theory” have only a vague idea of how the universe began.

I personally like the ideas expressed in the teaching of the Divine Principle.  Since we are all resultant beings and live in a created universe there has to be an ultimate cause.  Looking at the creation we can learn about the nature of this supreme origin: it occurs in dualities of opposites (like internal and external, positive and negative); it exists in relationships (all creatures are interconnected and depending on each other’s survival), and above all this being is our parent.  This is where Jesus comes in to teach us about the love this Heavenly Parent has for us.  As the Messiah he came as the savior for all mankind to reconnect us to our original source.  In the Principle we also learn about the process through which mankind was separated from God and the history of restoration (salvation).

“Nature speaks in symbols and in signs.”

~ John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1897), American Quaker Poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery

This is a video giving an explanation of how people experience and learn about God.
 

The narrator gives four points of why people belief in God:

1.    Religious upbringing

2.    Conversion or personal religious experience

3.    Argument of Causation (law of cause and effect)

4.    Argument of Design (creation needs a creator—art needs an artist)

After looking outward for so long, it is time to look inward.  We are all in this search for awareness and spiritual growth. This is a great period to go deeper into the spiritual teachings and reconnect with our Heavenly Parent. Maybe the sun will shine for you too.

 

The Heart of My Country

At Sunday service this Sunday, we sang the song: The Heart of My Country.  The words were by Hillie Edwards, an early Unification member.  The tune is an old English hymn.  Here are the words:

The Heart of my country beckons to me to fill its emptiness.

My Father long has spoken to me, His desire this land to bless.
He sends me on to life unknown, to work in a far off place.
He loves that land before I come, and through me He'll give it grace.

The truth is sought by ev'ryone in many a diff'rent way.

In darkness children seek the path that will hasten in the day.
Through struggles of the cent'ries long they have never ceased to fight
Our Father's will has kept them strong, and through Him they'll live in light

Now brothers, sisters all join hands to encircle all the earth.

The time has come for all mankind to know the world's rebirth.
Whatever we do, wherever we go, we are all in one embrace.
When we roll the clouds of dark away, we will see His shining face.

This song was very appropriate for the successful completion of the God’s Hope for America Tour.  We used to sing it a lot in the 1970’s during seminars and Sunday services.  It is even more suitable today, where some of us feel that we have lost the heart of our country.

This is the only nation in the world where people can worship freely, express their opinions and follow their dreams, disregarding their gender, religion, skin color, or social status.  Coming from another country (I am now a U.S. citizen) I cannot understand people who come over here and trying to implement the same laws and social status they have had in their country of origin.  If they liked that so much, they should have stayed over there.  This country is great because of its tradition of giving freedom and the pursuit of happiness to all its citizens.  It is our right based on the constitution.  For those who think that they have to change the constitution, they should go back to their home country or maybe check out North Korea.

I have also wondered why modern-day pastors and churches are so silent regarding political issues and why leaders are keeping their flock deliberately in the dark.

When I learned about a research done by the Barna Group that discovered that it has been decades since even a sizeable minority of pastors have bothered to educate and inform their congregations as to the Biblical principles relating to America’s political, cultural, and societal lives, I was truly amazed.  Why are religious leaders more interested in “being successful” as a congregation than serving their God?

Barna cites five reasons:

*Attendance
*Giving (money)
*Number of programs
*Number of staff
*Square footage (of facilities)

Barna believes that America’s malaise is directly due to the deliberate disobedience of America’s pastors--and the willingness of the Christians in the pews to tolerate the disobedience of their pastor. WOW.

For that I truly appreciated the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s teachings who always shared with us history and modern day situations from the providential point of view.  That’s why his teaching of God’s Hope for America and America is God’s Hope is still relevant for today.

If we take this country and its historical mission for granted and squander the blessings which God has bestowed upon this country, there is no other place to go to.  Let us rally together to bring God back into our churches, our schools, our government and above all into the hearts of all legal American residents.

What I Learned from my Granddaughter; Now that she is Two

I baby sit my granddaughter Jaya two days a week, but we live in the same household all the time.  Therefore, I have had some time to watch her and am quite impressed with her human skills.

Her favorite question right now is: why?  That’s very normal for a two year old.  She is very curious about many things.  As you notice her question is not: how but why.  That’s what impresses me because she has her own ways and means to get what she wants.  She has a very demanding way of saying: come, grandma, come. Or she puts up that mischievous smile which nobody can resist.

“A child is an exquisite attention-getting device, designed to sound an alarm at the first indication that he will be forgotten or relegated to a position where he does not count.  She needs the care and attention of strong, competent people to make it through, and nature obliges by endowing him with enough fear and aggression to stimulate to hold on fiercely to sources of viability.  His education in the ways of relationship sets him the primary task of understanding hierarchy, assessing where the power is, and learning what he must do to be accepted.  A child’s ability to control his position and the attention of others is critical, much more important than control is for the average adult on an average day.”

~ The Art of Possibility - Benjamin and Rosamund Zanders, Rule Number 6

Smirk or not, she likes to make friends with other kids when we go to the playground or to other public places.

Her favorite game right now is: hide and go seek.  She still has the notion that when she covers her eyes that I will not see her.  Because of that our hiding places are endless: in the garden, in the house, or in public places.

Her language skills are increasing daily.  She is like a parrot or a tape recorder, repeating many of the sentences we say.  Obviously, she does not get all the pronunciations right but it is cute to hear big people words in her high pitch voice.

She has an unlimited imagination and plays by herself with her doll, her puzzles, her little kitchen stove and other small objects like rocks and sticks by lining them up in a row or sort them by colors.

When she gets hurt or has something wrong with her foot or her things, she comes right away to express her dismay.  When we were trying to go out one day, and I discovered that we didn’t have her car seat, she was grunting and raving for the longest time: the car seat is lost, oh, no.

Jaya is a really hard worker.  She always wants to help. The other day I was moving some dirt in the garden with a spate.  Before I knew it, she brought her little play shovel from the sandbox and was carrying dirt with me.

Above all she is a great sheer leader and brings a lot of joy and laughter to our household.

I hope you have a two-year old around your house or close by for you to experience all the fun you can have with little kids.