Belvedere
Translator - Bo Hi Pak
What is the center of one's self? Someone might say, "My eye is my center." Someone like a carpenter, who is very active and uses his hands a lot, might say, "My hands are the center." Someone who is more intellectual might say, "My brain is the center." Different people would have a different interpretation of their center.
However, Unification Church members understand that we have a dual existence. We have a physical body as well as a spiritual body so there are two persons within one. Are they doing parallel things in harmony, or do they contradict each other? For some people, the physical body is their center and it is constantly pulling the spiritual body. In other cases, a person's physical body is guided more by his spiritual body. However, usually there is not complete harmony between the two parts of a person, so there is a contradiction.
When do these two persons within you become one? There must be some center which the physical body and the spiritual body agree on, something which both desire. Should this center be higher or lower than the individual? It should be a higher goal, a higher center. What is that higher center? That is the question.
What is the most important thing for man? Yes, it is love. And what else? Of the three: love, life, and the ideal, which is closest to you? Love and the ideal are complementary or reciprocal. However, life is the starting point. As far as you are concerned, is life itself closest to your heart? Where does life come from? The origin of life is the love of the parents. Your life sprang out of your parents' love. Just as parental love brought you into the world, you are following the same pattern. Your parents came together and created life. You too, when you are united in love, will bring a new life into being.
Our direction is universal: woman is going after man and man is going after woman. Why? The goal of life is to fulfill love. Each person is a participant in the love of the parents. Do you understand? Your existence is proof that you participated in the love of your parents. In this fashion, we not only give birth to descendants, but we climb higher and higher to the level of grandparent and great-grandparent.
Behind you is the historical love of your ancestors-your parents, grandparents, great-great-grandparents. You hold the string of the entire ancestral love. What number are you in that history? You do not know exactly where you fit in.
Ultimately, we can draw the conclusion that each person is the extension of the love of God. When you pull on the rope of history, you find that God's love is at the end. Each person living today is an extension of the love of God. When you say "I," contained within that "I" is your father, your mother, and God. We are made in the image of God through love. Each of us is a being who resembles his father and mother and God through love.
Therefore, when you say "I," you are not speaking of a singular being. Let's say you paid back all the debts you have incurred with your father, your mother, and God. What remains? Is there some portion of which you can say, "This is really mine. I have paid all my debts"? Can you say, "I don't care. I am totally independent"? Today American young people are living with great pride in themselves, proclaiming, "I am a free individual!"
When ones say, "Myself," or "Me," it represents all. "Myself' is a round, global entity, a microcosm of all of existence. Would you like to imagine yourself as a square little piece of ground? Or would you like to be round and have depth and width? Would you like to be a "myself" that is totally unrelated to others, singular and alone, or would you like to be the center and representative of the whole?
Using the body as an example, your eye can't say, "I am number one." Can the hand say, "I don't need anything else. I am an independent existence"? What is number one in oneself? You can say, "I am number one," when you truly have both your spiritual and physical body united and centered. That is the unification of oneself. all the senses united in one common purpose.
What would your five senses be most sensitive toward? Yes, the five senses are most sensitive toward and interested in love. Why? It is because your whole being was created by love. That is your history. Each person participated in that creation. Not only were you born in love, you also grew up in parental love.
When you talk about a stepfather or stepmother, it is an entirely different thing. Even if you say, "My stepfather is the President of the United States," does that have the same meaning as if it were your father? A stepfather or stepmother is not the same. Why is that? It is because your origins are not the same. There is a foreign element, so there is no true oneness of heart. Your destiny is different. How about you American boys and girls? Do you like stepfathers and stepmothers? Unfortunately, many American youth grow up under a stepfather or stepmother.
The physical body has five senses and so does the spirit body. At what point do all ten senses come together in unity? It is at the point of true and perfected love. Why do we put the adjectives "perfected" or "true" before the word "love"? The word "true" has great significance. Something true is unchanging. Something true is based on one center, period. There are never two centers. It is a vertical center.
What is the ideal center, which everything in the universe is trying to achieve? Yes, it is God's love. Does God's love have a central direction and purpose, or is it random and whimsical, moving all over the place in whatever way it wants? What do you think? God's love has a definite direction, and is headed toward a definite purpose. Is the direction of God's love upward toward a higher goal or downward? What do you think? How does the love of God move? God's love is not for Himself.
Love is always reciprocal and complementary, taking place through give and take. When we talk about love, we imagine a circuit, a channel of give and take. God must have an object in order to have a two-way or give and take relationship, so God is in the position of a subject looking for an object.
Who could be entitled to become the object of God? Only human beings. What kind of characteristic or quality should a person possess in order to become the object of God? The quality would be sensitivity to love or the ability to be awakened and activated by love.
The eyes want to see love. The nose wants to smell love. The ears want to hear love. The mouth wants to taste love. When we say that the fives senses exist to recognize and enjoy love, is that correct or not? Many of you have drooping eyes right now and you seem ready to fall asleep, but suppose that love hit your eyes all of a sudden. Then they would become like sparkling stars! Even if you sewed your mouth shut, as soon as love hit it, your lips would be unzipped and would begin to move. Love activates 100 percent of the potential of everything.
When love hits a man, his five senses respond differently yet harmoniously toward that love. It's almost like a symphony. Would it be better than a symphony? Let's say you have a choice. You could go to hear a symphony orchestra or a love orchestra. Which would you choose? No matter what you're like, you have one thing in common with everyone else. Everybody wants to hear the love symphony, the orchestra of love.
If your body reacts to love in that fashion, what about your internal self, your spiritual body? Would it be more sensitive or less sensitive?
The fives senses of the body have a certain common goal and purpose. Do you think they have a way of detecting that common goal? What if the five senses all acted independently and separately? Suppose your sense of hearing said, "No, I want to go this direction." Then your sense of sight said, "No, I want to go this direction." Your sense of touch said, "No, I don't agree. I'll go this direction." What do you think would happen? That would mean that the love direction would be going toward all different goals-up and down, left and right. There must be a central directional sense. All senses move harmoniously toward one direction, one goal-the true love goal. All the senses come together at that central line.
The important thing is that all five senses have to find and follow the absolute vertical line. In order to come to that vertical line, you have to find the center. First, you have to move horizontally and come to the center; then go up along the vertical line. You have to go through every level of experience. Why is that? When you come to the center, you will be able to relate in all directions freely.
You can't say, "I want to take a shortcut." A shortcut may sound wise and look like an energy-saving method, but actually it's not because in a shortcut there is no flexibility. You have no way to move in all the other directions.
What is the direction and goal of the love of God? The goal of the love of God is the central position. Where can we find such a universal center? God has a certain blueprint, a certain way of achieving that center.
First of all, there was Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were supposed to come together at the true center and become a couple, a husband and wife. When you have a perfect horizontal line, not wavering in any way, then the vertical line will meet it squarely at 90 degrees. Wherever there is a perfected minus, a perfected plus automatically appears. Isn't that so? A perfected plus will always invite a perfected minus, or even create a perfected minus.
Everyone has the natural inclination to search for a perfected minus or plus. If you are a plus, then you are looking for a perfected minus. If you are a minus, then you are looking for a perfected plus. It's a natural tendency for men and women to go after each other. Even if I shouted out, "You women, don't even look at men!" you would look at the men more! If I said, "Men, don't look at women! They are weird creatures and they are not worth looking at," it would never work. It's your nature. Even if your will says, "All right, I won't look at them," the power of nature would pull you.
It is natural law that men and women should meet on the horizontal line. The problem is that now men and women always meet at a different angle. There are all kinds of unhealthy situations. They meet at one degree, or 50 degrees or 30 degrees and so forth. When you meet as man and woman on a horizontal line in the center, then you automatically invite the vertical line of 90 degrees. Do you follow?
After you were engaged, my instruction was, "Don't talk to your fiancé too much. Don't call or even write each other too frequently." You feel so anguished. "Why can't I chase after her every night?" Many people think, "Oh, that is Father's way, the Oriental way." But what am I trying to achieve here? What is my goal in giving these instructions? I only have one reason: I would like you men and women, future husbands and wives, to meet on the perfect horizontal line.
At this time, three elements are approaching the center - the husband, the wife, and God. All three parts are moving. It's not only you who are moving but also God, who is coming down in a vertical movement. As you step closer and closer to the center horizontally, God comes down closer and closer. At the moment when man and woman finally meet, it's like a lightning flash.
When two electric circuits are shorted, what do you see? A spark. When a short occurs, something exciting happens. It either blows up or winds around or cuts off. Would you like to see it blow up or circle around with sparks flying, making a sparkling, flashing circle? At that particular point universal love also hits, making an even greater spark.
The love of man and woman is like one body, covering up the love of God. If the man happens to be in the lower position and the woman happens to be in the upper position, it doesn't make any difference. God will adjust His position to you. God will make sure that you are always meeting on the horizontal line and the 90 degree vertical line with Him, no matter what. In this central position, the two contrasting forces-the pulling power and the pushing power-are harmonized. The center is absolutely necessary in this universe. You have to have it. Otherwise, you have nothing.
Teenagers typically harbor incredible dreams and fantasies. They live in a world of imagination. Why is the teenager's mind like this and eager to reach out to the entire world? It is because that is the age when each person needs to find his own position. He's searching after his stable position in the universe, trying to find his settlement.
The universe has two layers, the physical and the spiritual. Man also has a dual existence. Between the spiritual and physical we also have to create a horizontal line. The unity of the spiritual and physical persons can only take place through love, centering on God. Are your mind and body united upon the love of God? Yes or no? All men are destined to walk that path. You are going after unity between mind and body, or spirit and body, and you walk toward the horizontal line. The important question is, are you moving on the horizontal line, centering upon true love?
Before you men worry about women, you have to worry about your own perfection. This perfection must be achieved by you. Where are you? Each person should evaluate where he is now.
Once you know this Principle, the center is established. Everything is okay as long as you move on a horizontal basis toward the love of God. Your mind keeps reaching out-and that mind is saying that you shouldn't let go of the love of God. But then, sometimes your physical body says, "I don't care about that love." The body sometimes becomes rebellious. When total unity is created between man's body and mind, centered upon the true love of God, he is an ideal man. What about women? Women are under the same Principle, working to become ideal women.
Those who are ideal men, raise your hands. There's not even one? Come on! What's happening? You say you are in training? How long does that training last? The important thing is that you know the truth. You know where you can get your diploma. When do you get the diploma for being an ideal man or woman? If you take an exam and fail it, is that the end of it? No. You have to go again, two, three, even a hundred times. You have to persevere until you pass it. Even if you went to the exam hall thousands of times and failed every time, will the administrators say, "Well, you poor guy. Come here and I'll give you points out of sympathy"? If anybody tries to have mercy upon you in such a way, then Satan is right there, saying, "No, no, even after a thousand times, failure is failure. No pass!"
We come to the conclusion that we have to move toward perfection, becoming ideal men or women along the horizontal line, with the love of God as the center. Your mind knows. Your mind is reaching out and it detects true love. Certain things are very torturous to your body, but your mind says, "Go fundraising. Go witnessing. Do hard work. Go to Home Church." Your mind keeps issuing directives all the time. What does your body say? Are you so disciplined that when your mind issues an order, your eyes and all five senses move in that direction without any deviation?
How long have you been in the Unification Church? Many people are very proud, saying, "Well, I've been a member for 10 years." The important thing is whether you passed the exam or not. The time is not important. If you've been in the Unification Church for 10 years but flunked the course every time-a thousand times-is your 10-year history a matter of pride or shame? Can you say, "Oh, I'm proud of 10 years of failure in the Unification Church."
Are you truly ready to accept the necessary education or training to become an ideal person? Who is Reverend Moon and what is he doing? What is the Unification Church all about? Some people say, "Reverend Moon is a slave driver, sending people to MFT. He is always pushing people out to witness." The problem is that they do not discuss the inner content of things but only appearances. Why has fundraising come about? Why do we need it? For what purpose are you paying indemnity? You have to have a goal and a purpose. The proper horizontal level is very difficult to maintain. You want to deviate, thinking, "Oh, I want to go downward today. I want to have an easier time."
Why am I always pushing you toward that very difficult horizontal line? Why do I say that you must move on the horizontal line? Day and night, I am pushing you toward the horizontal line. Why don't I say sometimes, "You've been going along the horizontal line for a long time, so now you can go up 45 degrees for a change, or down to 30 degrees." Some people complain and say, "Father, I've been obeying you for 10 years. For a change, can't you go my way for at least one day?" Do you think I should agree to that?
We're talking about love. We want to restore love. We want to achieve and fulfill love. You have to win the victorious base first, establish the foundation. For example, you have to achieve love through gaining victory over money. You are also putting love above the foundation of knowledge. Love must come above the aspiration for power. That is the Principle. Do you agree to that?
Suppose that if you followed the requirements of making money, you would have love. What about finding love in a money bag? What about love contained within knowledge-knowledge being all-powerful? Do you like that? What about power, honor and prestige? Is it the most valuable thing to be able to say, "I'm the President of the United States"?
Don't you want to put love above all these things? Yes, true love is above, that's true! I am saying that love is supreme. Love must be made pure. Therefore, it stands above money, above secular power, above secular knowledge.
In the Unification Church, if you really try to achieve that pure, supreme love, you will be called upon to make sacrifices. One person may sacrifice his education, another person his glorious career. One person sacrifices a creative, professional way of life to go the route of fundraising and witnessing. Some people say, "Well, I just cannot accept that. There must be a compromise somehow."
What about you state leaders? Do you say, "I've had this responsibility for so many years, now I want to go back to school." Maybe some Korean fiancée comes and says, "My husband is not very well-educated. I want to be proud of him, so I want him to get more schooling." Then she whispers in his ear, "Stop your mission for a little while and go back to school." I call them "Korean foxes"! I tell you, using such "Machiavellian" methods, as you call them, will never bring about lasting results. Our church would never have been able to lay its foundation upon such thinking.
Even if the man says to his fiancée, "Don't you think I need a little more education? I want to go to school," she should pull on him. "What are you talking about? Go out for MFT. Go out for witnessing. Do what Father says. That's the best."
Do you want to have perfectly horizontal love, 15 degree-slanted or 30 degree-slanted love? You are clever enough to know the answer, but you do not really want to do it. Do you not only know the answer but want to live up to it? Yes or no?
In a way, I appear to be a very cruel man. I am always thinking, "How can I make them work harder?" Looking at it on the surface, people wonder, "How can Reverend Moon be so cruel? Why doesn't he give us a break?" Let me ask you a question: do you want the horizontal line to be endless and continue all the way for eternity? Or would you like it to be just one hour in length? Why isn't a one-hour horizontal line good enough? The shorter the horizontal line, the smaller the love and joy it contains. If the container is so small, how much love and joy can you put into it?
However, if your horizontal line lasts for eternity and is endless, then your joy and love become endless. Which one do you want? You know the answer. Would you try to do it within one generation, or two or three generations? God always operates on an eternal basis. If you want to achieve this eternal base in 7 years, that would be perfectly okay.
What do you feel when you see your fiancé? You feel good, don't you? You feel fond of him or her. The important thing is this: every time you look at your future spouse, you have to consider, "I must be united in mind and body centered upon true love." Are you meeting your fiancé from that position? Your mind and body are not on a perfect horizontal line. If there's a degree slanted either way, then the horizontal line and the 90 degree vertical line are in different directions.
Suppose that your fiancé is in one place, but you are imagining him to be someplace else. Then you say, "Please come over here. This is where I want to meet you." Should your fiancé move down there? If he or she doesn't come, then what happens?
When your mind and body are not on a true horizontal line but on a slanted line, can the vertical line be at 90 degrees? No, it cannot. If the mind and body turn in a sort of circle, it cannot be a perfect circle. It would be oval. When an oval shape is turning inside of you, it creates excessive friction and pain. But when you are perfectly circular, no matter how fast you may turn, you don't even feel that you are turning. It's so quiet, so perfect. Perfect love wants to dwell within that perfect circle. Through that perfect turning, you can love your fiancé. That's the righteous way.
How about you? When your mind and body are not united on the horizontal line, you must be ashamed. If your mind and body are not ready, you cannot call your fiancé. You don't have much to say. You should not even write in that case. With that kind of hand can you try to touch the sacred body of your fiancé? You are not worthy. With that kind of mouth can you kiss your future husband or wife? You are not worthy of it.
This is a serious matter. Within you, you must have a perfect horizontal and perfect vertical line. Your object also has a mind and body, perfectly vertical and perfectly horizontal. When these perfect two have give and take, a perfect circle will be created. A perfect circle has a perfect center, an axis, which will stay in this family for eternity because God dwells within that center.
This true center can be expanded into the nation and it will become the national center. Expanded into the world, it becomes the worldwide center. The center cannot be moved. There are different levels, but the center remains the same. The national center or the worldwide center is the same. The universal or cosmic center are all in dual layers-spiritual and physical-yet it is the same unchanging center.
From the central point, the distance to anywhere in the circle would be the same. It is always cut into perfect halves. As long as your cutting line goes through the center, the direction doesn't make any difference. You can always cut the circle into two perfect parts, perfect halves. However, when the center is in the wrong place and you try to cut that circle into two parts, there is no way to have perfect halves. If the axis is in the wrong place, when it moves, it just deviates more and more.
Do you want love, which is perpetual and eternal, or would you like to have random love with movement, which is undependable? What kind of love would you like? If you want it to be eternal, you have to base it on the eternal center. Then you can start eternal movement. Why do we have to achieve 90 degrees? Conjugal love has to be on the perfectly horizontal line, where the love of God is perfectly vertical. When the vertical love of God meets the horizontal conjugal love, it always meets at 90 degrees.
If you follow the original line of the love of your ancestors all the way from God down to you, should it be a vertical line or a slanted line? It should be a vertical line, which goes down to the axis. Would the center be two or one? That center is an absolute center, which cannot be moved either way.
Today's topic is, "The Center and My Position." Do you say, "I don't need the center. I reject it"? All right then, think about what your life should be based on. You may try to create some handy way of life but no one would buy it. It's so cheap, even the dime store wouldn't buy it. God and the spirit world certainly would never buy it. Ideal men and women would never buy it. Maybe a beggar would not buy it but just grab it. Do you want to become trash like that?
As long as your center is correct, the horizontal and the vertical lines are correct, so even if your external shape is ugly or odd, that's okay. Why is that okay? It is because you can alter it; you can smooth it out, shine it up. Then there will be a great many buyers. You'll be in big demand.
What kind of material or "merchandise" are you? Are you cheap or expensive? What price tag are you wearing? "Every Sunday morning-what torture! Reverend Moon asks me to come to Belvedere, not at 8 o'clock but at 5 o'clock!" Are you here with a spirit burning with the zeal of great hope and greater anticipation? Or are you feeling dull, spiritless, like a bump on a log, staying here only out of duty?
Think about it. Where are your mind and body? You should have burning zeal, saying, "I want to come to Belvedere. I want to sit on the floor and listen, not just on Sunday but every day. Even ten years is okay. I will do it." That is what we call burning zeal. Do you have that? Think about it. If you searched through the libraries of all the great universities, you wouldn't find any greater truth than what you have found here. Amazingly enough, what I am teaching at this humble Belvedere is the only true solution available in the universe. It's almost mind-boggling. Don't you have that confidence?
As long as you are a link along this vertical chain, you will never really die because you're a part of history. When history moves, you'll live on. You'll never be separate from history. Today, at this moment, you're sitting in Belvedere. The next moment you may be going into Harlem. It doesn't make any difference. Wherever you go, you are always with the vertical line. No one can expel you from the realm of God's love. No power under the sun can kick you out of this boundary. On the contrary, the universe embraces and protects such a person and won't allow any harm to come to him.
When you come to the total realization of this truth, that is the moment your resurrection occurs. Universal love begins. In that respect, you are the flag-bearer of the love of God. That is true pride, true greatness.
Think, "No matter what the world says, I don't care. The entire spirit world respects and admires me and is supporting me. The ideal of love is blossoming." In that position, you get attention from the spirit world, from all the saints in history and from the entire angelic world. The attention of God is also directed towards you.
From this sermon, you have realized that our Divine Principle teaching of the heavenly four positions is the eternal truth. This is based on the centrality of love. That's the position where you would like to be born, where you would like to grow up and live for all eternity. That is the heavenly four positions.
If you are trying to live eternally based on anything other than this, would that be a good life? For example, would you like to live for eternity with just a big bag of money? How about knowledge? You think you know a great deal, but when you come before God, would He say, "My dear Ph.D. ' I bow down to your knowledge"? If you went to the throne of God and said, "I was the President of the United States. You should bow down to me," would God honor such secular power? No, of course not.
I do not deny the need for money, knowledge, and power in this world, but most important is the central supreme need of love. When the world is centered upon the supreme love of God, all power becomes God's power, all money becomes God's money, and all knowledge becomes God's knowledge. We utilize them for the productivity of God's world.
Today's topic is "The Center and My Position." Where is your position? Where would you like to be? Imagine that you are a very small particle of the universe, so small you can hardly be seen. You are becoming a cell of love. You may be very small, but with the horizontal and vertical love, your life will go on for eternity. You will go on seeing, hearing, and touching. That is the ideal way of life. As long as you have the true center, it does not matter if you are big or small. Size alone does not change value or truthfulness.
No one with an individualistic outlook on life can be perfected. We definitely proclaim the value of freedom but that freedom must be based on the true love of God. True love exists in four directions of relationship. In this respect, do you need your parents? Why? That is a relationship, which is required by true love. Your parents are your origin. How can you deny your origins? They are your roots and you are their branches. For many Americans, once you are eighteen, you are grown up, independent, and you no longer need or care much about your parents. Is that the right way of life?
Would you like a life of "fun," taking your own pleasure-one lover today, another tomorrow, another the next day? Why not? Why should you keep the 90 degrees between the vertical and horizontal levels? What would be wrong with 15 degrees, 30 degrees, 45 degrees? That is the concept of free sex. People may say they are having lots of fun, but they do not know love. There is no way they can really understand the love we are talking about, the true love of God. They only know animalistic, instinctual love which has no history, no universal concept or ideal. From the eternal point of view, those people are full of all kinds of smells, and the stains of dishonesty, immorality, and illicit love are upon them. Purity has no part of that way of life.
What about you? Do you exhibit purity and genuineness? The Unification Church is a truly wonderful way of life. When you really know the truth, this is the only way for you to go for all eternity. Here we have people of all five colors of skin mingling together as one family of man, happy to marry each other. By asking me to match you, are you constructing the base of your life in a temporal way or for eternity? Why are you going after eternal life? When you have gained eternal life, everything that is eternal will come to you and stick to you as if you were a magnet.
You may say, "When everything comes and sticks to me, that will be very awkward. What shall I do with myself?" Don't worry. Eternal things are all godly, so when eternal things come to you, the power and the love of God will also come to you. You will not be encumbered. The more things come and stick to you, the more grateful you will feel; the more joyful, exhilarated, and ecstatic you will feel-infinitely.
Think about the problems of the spirit world. Do they have economic problems? Are they worried about the nuclear bomb? Do they need a national security advisor? Do they seek knowledge, power, or money in the spirit world? If you could bring a dollar bill to the spirit world, no store would accept it. Distance is no problem there. If you want to go anywhere within the entire universe you can do so at the speed of thought. Do you think the speed of thought is faster or slower than the speed of light? God is thought and mind, so God is way ahead of light.
God travels instantly and He travels ahead of our minds also. Universal movement, however, is not straight but circular. Internal movement, in particular, is always circular. A circle always needs an axis. There must be an axis for the universe and God Himself must have a center. Nothing else but true love can be that center. If there were no true love, God would not even want to move. He would just sit in a rocking chair and rock. Why should He work to make a circle? No matter what other motivation is available, without true love, nothing will move. God moves as soon as He is ignited by true love.
Why do we need to unite our mind and body? Because by doing so, we can activate God and His love. Why do you have to have true love, a true and pure relationship with your future spouse? Because by doing so, you can activate God and His love. Why do you, as heavenly husbands and wives, act as patriots, serving the nation? Because that too will activate the love of God. Why do we eagerly serve mankind and the world, trying to follow the tradition of the saints? Because that will activate the love of God. All action, that of families, societies, and the world should be based upon one axis, one center.
In this respect, you come to realize what a great person you are, what a great position you are in. When you make a move, God moves. What a great feeling! Instead of God moving you, you can take the initiative. Activate the love of God and then God will move. How wonderful!
If you are going to Africa, riding in an airplane and looking down at the African continent with a burning zeal to love the people, then God will be moving along with you. God will parallel all your actions. When you move this way or that, God will instantly move with you.
Picture yourself holding a long pole on which the flag of love is flying. You are the flagbearer. When we Unification Church members live the Principle, are we big or small people? Even small Japanese members become big people, isn't that right? You may be physically small, but centering upon true love, you can be a giant in the universe. I am picturing a small Japanese member trying to hold up the huge flag of love. You need strength to hold this giant flag, but it's no problem: true love will give you that strength.
Do you want to be just loosely together with your beloved, or do you want to be tightly united? Do you want to have a loose oneness or a very tight oneness? Love wants to be very tight. Love is intense. Size does not matter because of the impact and intensity of true love. If a Japanese man is truly burning with zeal to become the flagbearer, and he is loving the world as God loves it, he will become a giant. In that case, the flag of love would become small and the Japanese member would become big. You can become great from the smallest position. From the greatest position, you can become small. That is the power of love.
When you have this love, there is no place you cannot go, nothing you cannot do. That is the ideal. Let us imagine God hiding in a small, secret place, like a broom closet, trying to be undetected. But when you have a true love key, you can open any door and find God. Let's say that God is hiding in a big safe with a million-digit combination. With a true love key, it will open easily.
When you open the door, God may be sleeping, even snoring. To wake Him up, you might try kicking Him. Still sleeping, God may reach out to hold you because, waking or sleeping, God can detect true love. That is your position. How wonderful you are!
In our way of life, we are going out every day, not tired, not bored, not apathetic, but with ecstatic joy. Do you feel that the Unification Church way of life is precious or are you doing it out of duty, just barely making it? Are you a fireball? From today on, will you be different? Will you go out knowing that you are precious, that you are a giant?
We realize that there is a universal center, but the center is really influenced by us. Furthermore, the center exists for us. You may think that you are only working for someone else, but in reality when you serve others, you are truly working for your own benefit. That is why we shall march on in this wonderful way of life. Amen.
