|
Chapter Six
Transformation during
Young Adulthood, and True Marriage
Section 1. The Significance of Marriage
We might say that marriage is a ceremony that allows us to open the door of the palace of happiness and enter in. Therefore, marriage is a great event for humankind. Love transcends time and space and is the greatest thing for humankind. Marriage is the ceremony that reveals and confirms this greatest love. (Blessed Family - 356)
Why do we refer to the marriage ceremony by saying, “receive the Blessing?” According to the Principle, if Adam and Eve had not fallen and had become mature, they would have stood in the position to receive the Blessing. In other words, if God becomes a subject partner, Adam and Eve become His substantial object partners.
We know the Blessing is realized as we perfect our individual character and get married on the foundation that can connect God as the subject partner of love to the love of the object partner. After all, maturity leads to marriage, and marriage leads to the appearance of God’s love. If there were no marriage, then love would not have started in the human world. Who is the owner of that love? We should realize that the owner is not a human being but God. When God’s love appears among us, it becomes God’s joy and pride, and we experience this as God’s love.
Love cannot be realized alone; it is only realized through a reciprocal relationship. Therefore, a man cannot realize love by himself alone. The same can be said of a woman. When Adam and Eve finally unite through love, they can receive God’s love. From this viewpoint, we can understand that we human beings are born from God. (76-40, 1975.1.26)
Since all the principles of heaven and earth are based on the relationship of subject partner and object partner, a man and woman getting married is also a principle of heaven and earth. If a man is the right side, a woman is the left side. This is for the sake of forming a horizontal relationship in the universe, and also for the sake of forming a vertical relationship with God because the man is the subject partner and the woman is his object partner. Therefore, marriage is neither for the man alone nor for the woman alone. It is for the sake of being in accord with heavenly law. Therefore, men and women have different forms. They are born in such a way that they can be in accord with the heavenly law. (101-38, 1978.10.28)
Marriage is a relationship where two partners have give and take in a reciprocal position where they can console each other in times of loneliness, rejoice together in times of happiness, and help each other in times of difficulty. They unite so they can live on the basis of God’s love while moving towards God. This is the life of marriage. God created men and women on earth rather than in heaven to realize God’s love horizontally. In other words, when man and woman form a relationship and become one horizontally, their love can make a vertical relationship of love with God, the subject partner. This is extremely important. (Blessed Family - 356)
Section 2. The Reason for Marriage
A man is born to find a woman, and a woman is born to find a man. A man and a woman are born to become one and come in contact with God’s love, which is at a higher level. They cannot come into contact with this love alone. Even if they were to contact it alone, it would be one-sided. They cannot come into contact with three-dimensional and spherical love. This is why a man and woman get married: to jump to a higher level, three-dimensional realm of love.
In the original world, the more closely united a man and woman become, a great center emerges as that force acts and forms a sphere. The more they are connected horizontally, the more the original source of love within the vertical power becomes connected with them. This is where the mind and body become one. (109-273, 1980.11.2)
Why do we get married? Marriage allows us to go to the Kingdom of Heaven. Without marrying, we cannot go to the Kingdom of Heaven. So we have to get married in order to be qualified to go to the heavenly kingdom. What is the qualification to go to the heavenly kingdom? It is to resemble God.
What do we have to do to resemble God? We have to be people who practice God’s word. We will pass if we can make God’s love my love, and make God’s word my word. This is why I am saying to the world on behalf of God, “Humankind, you have to go to the Kingdom of Heaven!” Next, we will pass if we can say, “In order to go to the heavenly kingdom, I will love humankind like God and take them there with me.”
We can conclude that we are people on the heavenly side and candidates to go to the Kingdom of Heaven. On the day we become like this, we will have the qualification to get married. Now, why do we get married? The answer is in order to go to the Kingdom of Heaven and for the sake of humankind.
A man should know that the woman standing in front of him is God’s daughter and humankind’s daughter. If you can love her as a woman who is loved by humankind and love her as God’s beloved daughter, you are qualified to be her husband. But otherwise you are not. Women are the opposite. Do not think, “He is my man.” Before saying that he is your man, think of him as God’s son and a man representing the masculinity of humankind. You will pass if you are a woman who can love him more than humankind does and more than God does.
When you marry, you should think that as a man you will be the right foot and as a woman you will be the left foot, taking steps through the family to live for the sake of humankind and God. (88-316, 1976. 10.3)
The purpose of marriage is to unite the hearts of a man and a woman and to perfect the love of a man and a woman. Marriage is a declaration of the intention to show you can do this. If you have achieved perfection of love and perfection of heart through married life, then you have realized the ideal of the family. So you will surely go to the heavenly kingdom if you have succeeded in this by the time of your death. (Blessed Family - 358)
Section 3. The True View of Marriage
Originally, if a family based on God’s love had been formed, this would have been the realm of perfection, the original ideal that was supposed to be realized without the Fall in the Garden of Eden. For this to happen, Adam and Eve would have had to totally unite mind and body, completely mature vertically, and realize, as a bride and bridegroom, the realm of partnership that brings joy to God and thus receive God’s blessing.
Why do you love your children? It is because you have received God’s great work of creation horizontally and in the physical realm and you want to feel the joy that God felt after creating Adam and Eve. Next, as God had dominion over all things of heaven and earth, He gave us the dominion to have us rule over all things, even though we are in the horizontal position. The world where we can stay in the position of maintaining order while holding onto that authority is the ideal Kingdom of Heaven.
Therefore, at the time of marriage, we come to inherit God’s love and receive the authority of re-creation and dominion while standing in the realm of perfection. So marriage refers to the appearance of love and the endowment of the authority of creation and dominion. (76-45, 1975.1.26)
In our view, marriage is the seat cushion of the universe. Do you know the seat cushion of the universe? What is the best silk in the universe? Is it brocade? Rather than spend your newlywed life on a simple mattress, imagine that you will spread a mattress of universal brocade and make love on it. This is a moment when you determine ownership in your life with respect to love. You can say, “Ah, the possession of love has arrived in my own generation, and the possession of the being called woman has been determined.”
What is woman? She is half the universe, and if you catch her, the universe will hang on to you. Think about this. On the other hand, why should a woman be married? She gets married in order to attach herself to a man so that the two halves, each being 180 degrees, can unite and create a sphere of dominion comparable to the value of the universe. Considering these things, the philosophy of the Unification Church is truly splendid. (Blessed Family - 361)
You should have a creed that you get married not for your own sake but for the sake of your partner. It is wrong to expect to receive a talented person or a pretty person for your spouse. Once human beings understand the principle of living for the sake of others, they should embrace the idea that they will also get married for the sake of their partners. By our marriage standards, a husband should have the conviction that no matter how dull his partner may be, he will love her more than a beauty. (Blessed Family - 361)
Unless you decide that you will love your partner like God, like humankind, and more than anyone else in the world, you cannot be restored to the heavenly kingdom. If you, as a man, do not know how to love a woman, you cannot love God and humankind. (97-319, 1978.4.1)
You get married for the sake of humankind. It is for the sake of the common benefit of humankind. It is something that represents the world. The man is a man representing the world and the woman is a woman representing the world. (75-278, 1975.1.12)
Section 4. What Kind of Time is Young Adulthood?
Ladies and gentlemen, in young adulthood, a young man feels as if he were a prince of heaven and earth. It is a time when one thinks of everything by turning it upside down self-centeredly. Since young adulthood is a period of rebellion, young people can, without recognizing it, take a dangerous path at any time. This is why the problem of youth today has become a global problem.
In young adulthood, only things that center on you interest you. If something has a relationship with you, you are excited about it, no matter how insignificant it is. When you look at ladies around the age of twenty, they giggle for no reason. They laugh when they see a ripe persimmon drop from a leafless persimmon tree in the autumn.
There is a mysterious connection: everything is related to them, arousing the highest emotion. Hence, young adulthood is a turning point when you can come in contact with everything and make a connection with it. Why is that so? It is because it is based on God’s original nature of creation, which seeks to completely – 100 percent – unite a man and a woman through God’s love. (33-332, 1970.8.23)
No matter how pretty a lady may be, she has her young adulthood only once. At that time, she is the best of all flowers, and it is the most precious time of her life. Nevertheless, are there women who say, “I will live alone?” They are not women.
Also, among men, are there some with fine bodies who yet say that they will live by themselves at this great pinnacle of youth? In such times, they will surely come to look for their partner. They are like this, and who do they resemble? They resemble God. Could we find such a person if God were not like this? God is like that. It is the same for men and women – in the heart of their youth, which is the most precious time of their life, they go out looking for their partner. (32-248, 1970.7.19)
The most flowery time, the period of young adulthood when the flower is in full bloom, follows puberty. This is the seven years between the ages of eighteen and twenty four. These seven years frame a period when the beautiful flower of love blossoms and they are never repeated. How precious, then, is this beautiful period, which comes only once in your life?
Ladies and gentlemen, you know the peony, don’t you? It buds with a very distinctive yellow flower. How many layers do you think one has? The petals are wrapped up tightly. Can you undo one? It is wrapped up tightly so it cannot be easily harmed. The same is true for men and women. When will you bring to full blossom your crimson love, the bud of love that is like peony flower? It is in this period that beauty, within the harmony of heaven and earth, reveals itself best. For human beings, it is the time of blossoming to the highest degree. It is a period to become the superb work of God and shine as His greatest expression.
The most flowery and beautiful time in one’s development is the time of youth. Your looks in your youth are like the greatest flowers. A person who can love this period to the fullest will be invited to God’s living room. A man and a woman who practice this kind of love can receive God’s blessing and be invited into God’s living room. If you men understand this, you should prepare accordingly. (26-151, 1969.10.25)
Section 5. What Causes the Transformation in Adolescence?
Children have vague dreams and just want to grow up healthy. As they enter youth and physical changes start to occur, their interest in the opposite sex heightens and their eyes sparkle with curiosity and beauty. They wear fashionable clothes and show off their style and become absorbed in beautifying and polishing their faces. If you look at a young woman’s lips, you can see if she is at this age.
When women enter puberty, they begin to menstruate and undergo many physical changes. Their buttocks get bigger, their breasts bulge out, their lips become red, and sometimes their eyes twinkle mysteriously. Why and for whom do these changes in women come? Women’s physical changes are for the sake of going round and round on a path they previously traveled in a straight line. They are changes for starting a movement that can go round and round. There is no harmony in the straight path. If you go back and forth along a straight path, things become exhausted and nothing remains. If you go up and down the straight path, you will only destroy the environment and undermine the harmony of the environment.
For the sake of the harmony and preservation of the environment, we need to move in a circular motion. So everyone must go around. In going around, you cannot go around alone, so you should revolve around your partner as the center. You can turn only when you collide with a partner. If you collide with a partner, a reaction occurs automatically and initiates a revolving movement. This is a principle of heaven and earth.
Therefore, the physical changes in women arise so they may meet a partner and go around. Their collision generates the force for going around. I say that women apply cosmetics and beautify themselves not for their sake but for the sake of others. (Blessed Family - 366)
Observe a beautifully dressed woman when she is looking at a man and you will see that her eyes are particularly bright. I say this is a natural outcome because she enhances her beauty and cultivates herself in order to find a partner. She goes around anxiously searching for a nice man, an ideal man. (Blessed Family - 366)
When a young man and woman in their young adulthood meet and talk, their hearts leap, right? Do they leap or not? You don’t know? If I say they leap, will you say they leap? They leap. See. You get excited, right? If you get excited, some physiological change comes to your heart. So if the mind is not attentive to God but stands on the opposite side, it becomes evil. Who is your mind centered on? It is God. Love enables you to go up to the place where the God-centered mind and heart become one. Do you understand this? Human beings must have an ideal and hope centered on love because they have to live life in this position. Also, that which shines in the final place is love. (26-158, 1969.10.25)
Section 6. First Love in Young Adulthood
Adolescents’ minds and bodies receive impulses to search for love. They go around as they please, without listening to their parents. The eyes of the mind and eyes of the body move as one. With noses of love, they come to like even smells they never liked before. With mouths of love, they come to like even the tastes they never liked before. They want to listen to stories of love, even staying up all night.
The more they touch their partner of love, the more desire they have to touch that partner. From the young adulthood, young people become wrapped up in feelings of love; their eyes become strange and they try to see everything in a favorable light. When your mind and body become one and shoot a gun of love, a bullet of love enters into the heart of your partner. Those who want such love of a man and such love of a woman, raise your hands. There is nothing love cannot digest. It can savor everything you eat and digest everything.
If someone has sincere love, even if he is a very ugly man, he will look handsome. Love is an amazing thing. Thus, whether you are a man or a woman, whether you are bright and good- looking or dull and bad-looking, you can never forget the first love of youth. (Blessed Family - 373)
If a girl who has a life-and-death love for someone is forced by her parents to marry another man, do you think she will be happy or miserable for the rest of her life? In her eyes, the man of her first love looks as lovely as a flower, even if he has a twisted nose and ugly eyes. Even if the man chosen by her parents is someone everybody can praise in terms of looks, education, and so on, and the man she used to love is dull and ugly, she still hears the whispering in her heart for the man of her first love.
The first love occupies everything. Who is the subject partner of love? It is God. Since the subject partner of love is God, there is no one you can love but God. Originally, you were supposed to have your first love with God. But the failure to do so is the Fall. Whom did Eve love? She loved the archangel. She was supposed to love with joy, but she loved while frowning and weeping. (Blessed Family - 361)
Ladies and gentlemen, do you think at the time of the Fall, Eve said, “Oh, great! I have eaten the fruit and it is so delicious?” How do you think Eve felt when she was being raped by the archangel? She fell into the archangel’s seduction while experiencing the pangs of conscience and hating it. She should have loved as a flower enjoys spring, with all of her cells filled with joy, but instead she experienced love frowning, with her cells shrinking and her heart dying.
If she had not fallen, whom would she have loved as her first love? She would have had her first love with God. The first love Adam and Eve were to have had with God would have contained all the forms of first love. The parental love as the first love, the conjugal love as the first love, and the children’s love as the first love – all these would have attached firmly to God at the root.
These loves would not have had to go through various stages of restoration, such as individual and family restoration, over a long historical course as in your case; they are loves that would have all bonded simultaneously. Within the first love of God, all other loves – parental, conjugal, and children’s love – would have bonded together all at once.
(Blessed Family - 373)
Section 7. The Best Time of Marriage – When is Love Connected?
The omniscient and omnipotent God created for human beings a time when they can blossom with brilliance, and I would say this is the time of youth. God created them in such a way that they can cultivate their happiness in the time of youth in love. To the existing human world pursuing this ideal, God gave the Blessing called marriage as a gate through which a man and a woman can become happy in the glamorous time of youth.
No created being has value in its existence aside from the ideal of reciprocity. Thus, for human beings, it is completely natural to receive the Blessing and get married after having grown up. (Blessed Family - 366)
When is love connected? When does the force of love start pushing you together? Men and women enter this state in adolescence, when their organs become 100 percent mature. Everything is at a standstill. It enters a state of saturation.
Movement, without doubt, follows a path to a state of saturation. After reaching that point, it either stops or turns. It stops after entering such a state of saturation. The stage before entering the state of saturation is puberty. Puberty is a time when your organs are vibrant in the process of the growth of your body. In comparison to a balloon, it is like going from the state of being flat with no air, to the point of being full of air, and then to a taut state immediately preceding explosion. A slight bit more air and the balloon pops.
What is this explosion? How great will it be if it is an explosion triggered by the perfection of love? Young adults, at about age eighteen, become tight like a stretched rubber band. They go to the position right before explosion and from there can nicely roll forward into eternity. (110-80, 1980.11.9)
The spirit and body can become completely one when the original love is present within. Even in the fallen world, puberty refers to a time when the spirit and the cells of the body become one and can stand on a balanced line. The cells of spirit and body during puberty open all doors and welcome things with joy. Young people with a relationship with God will gaze upon the human world filled with joy and happiness as they reach puberty. (Blessed Family - 366)
But if they jump into love in a rush to experience it based on feeling happy or because they are intoxicated with the intriguing feelings of love, they can create a major problem. The door of love opens only when the time comes, and you have to wait until the door opens before entering it. You should open it proudly after you become an owner of love. (Blessed Family - 366)
When do you consider the optimum age for marriage? I would say the best time for marriage is when your mind and body are most vibrant and strong. As youth passes, vigor ebbs, and finding a partner becomes more difficult, even with a pure heart of love.
(Blessed Family - 366)
Is there a place where perfect people, that is, a perfect man and woman, come to be? It is a place where they can receive God’s love centered on the public will of heaven and attend God as the subject partner after completely uniting their mind and body. When they come to such a place, they will stand in the position of perfected Adam and Eve. When such people form a family and make a start, this is a historic start. This is the beginning of a historic life course. (26-160, 1969.10.25)
Section 8. Love of a United Mind and Body
Ladies and gentlemen, do you know about the three points? The point where the three points become one is the place where God, Adam and Eve become one. The place where God can be one with Adam and Eve is the place where their mind and body become one. (26-158, 1969.10.25)
Man’s mind and body exist in the relationship of subject and object partners, and the mind and body generate the force of existence through their vertical and horizontal interactions.
A woman’s force of existence is maintained because her mind and body have vertical and horizontal relationships. Men and women all exist within reciprocal vertical and horizontal relationships and this force is love. Only love can forge an ideal relationship of mind and body eternally. (Blessed Family - 376)
The five senses of the mind and the five senses of the body of even a poor farmer in the countryside will completely merge and allow him to taste an indescribable joy when the passion of love swells up and burns in his mind and body.
If you have a point of settlement where God’s love can come and dwell in you, when God’s heart makes a wave, your heart will also make a wave once, like the swinging pendulum of a clock. In this way, you will turn around together with God. Once you begin turning, you will keep turning around and around again. The centrifugal force becomes greater and greater and demands that you love your family, your society, your nation, and the world. (Blessed Family - 376)
When your mind and body become one and the time approaches when the gate of love can open, your mind will resonate with the universe, and you can sometimes become a poet or novelist.
Because you express a quality that makes love beautiful and happy, you can write poems or novels with a theme of love. With the eyes of love open, the mind and body acquire a desire to make a three-dimensional relationship in the universe. Thus, we smile when we perceive the workings of nature in the falling autumn leaves or experience becoming one with a flower out of a desire to compete in beauty with the flowers blossoming on a hillside in spring. (Blessed Family - 376)
Why do men and women like love? The human body consists of trillions of cells, and the time when these cells move as a whole is when one is in love. You should know that the time when all the cells of the human body move together is the time when a man and a woman are in love. (Blessed Family - 376)
When mind and body become one and shed tears of longing, the bones cry. It is the same in the case of animals. What happens when a female cow is in heat? It forgets eating. At that time, its entire nervous system makes it want only one thing. Likewise, when you love and long for each other with your mind and body as one, there will be no cell in your body that does not move. All cells will lose a sense of individual direction and focus on one point. If you meet your partner this way, you will explode. The power of that explosion becomes an incredible force. What are we trying to do when we love like this? We are trying to resemble God. We are trying to go to the place where we can participate in what God desires. In other words, we are trying to feel what God likes, together with God. (Blessed Family - 376)
|