My Calling

In this presentation I want to go through what I perceive is the course of my calling, which led me not to the Unification Movement but through it.

In high school, possibly 10th grade, I received my calling. It was a weekend evening, saying final goodbyes to friends after a night out in the town. We were laughing at something someone had said when a voice loud and clear came to my ears and said: ‘but you are different’. It was never repeated. It was never explained.

For half a century I struggled with the main question, ‘why me?’ It was like a stick stuck in my soul, without an answer. Recently I began to look at the question from a different angle.

Spirit world isn’t capricious, but seeks people they can work through. They won’t automatically, suddenly just pick a person (descendant?) out of the blue to work through. They need to make sure they can work with us.

Why is this happening, according to principle?

•. Returning resurrection. They need permission to come down. The power to guide and influence us is given only when the spirit(s) themselves have been given a mission during their terrestrial life. They may continue or finish it on earth now that True Parents are here.

•. Spirit world is looking for merit. They were born at a time before True Parents were on earth, and couldn’t attend them. They are now seeking an opportunity to do something to get a bit of merit to tell Heavenly Parents they gave their few bits of grain to correct this fallen unprincipled world.

•. Spirit world is going to ‘test waters’. Who on this physical plane is able and willing to speak messages they give. By principle, returning resurrection is a public service. Spirit people cannot just selfishly want something or even just come down, and get merit. It’s normal, give & take (receive). I.E., must give before receiving. Heavenly Father must give them permission.

•. Being spiritually open, having mediumistic qualities, being guided by spirit world does not start after joining the True Parents movement. It starts long before. It’s what gets us to this movement. True Parents at Belvedere once told members that some of us come to the movement with a mission, so we should follow the mission. Some of us don’t come with a mission, so we need to follow our Cfs.

I probably had many more experiences than the two I’m going to mention here.

We students were in biology class with a new teacher. He sat on the table, swinging his feet saying he’s a scientist. Scientists, he said, don’t believe in God, don’t believe in religion, don’t believe in angels, .. At that moment a student in the class screamed out ‘I believe in angels, I always speak to them, …’ I was very incredulous, and equally burst out ‘.. you can’t believe in angels, can you?’ She turned and very casually said yes she did. It ended there. I have to this day no idea how I could speak out like that, as it was not my nature to do so.

A friend and I bicycled 450 km down to a beach house where we were to meet my family. It took 4 and a half days. At the end of a few days, with my father, we were going to drive north. On the way up this friend rode with us to a town. He was going to go back to the city and take a plane back home. He had to get to the city, so he decided to hitchhike. Saying good bye, I joked he’d not hitch a ride and would end up flying. So it happened. After 8 hours, he decided to stop trying to get a ride and ended up taking a plane. I often speak my mind, or speak out loud. I’m normally a silent type but when spirit world wants to give a message or predict something, they don’t hold back. We also must not. It’s the nature of spiritually open people. We are disruptive when not careful. I often write down when I cannot speak out loud.

A next experience I remember was different. I’m not a good reader. My father gave me a book to read, ‘The Quest of the Overself’ by Charles Bronson. I leafed through it. When I gave it back to my father I casually told him that ‘anyway, I believe we live forever’. Why? I had little to no religious education as a child. It just came out. I had never even thought about spirit world or eternal life. Spirit world just came down and blurted this out through me. Contrarily, this caused a major upheaval at home. My father a firm nonbeliever (denier, really. He spent his school years in Catholic schools) of spirit world. The story goes that he kept my mom awake, ‘crying’. My mom came to me the next morning, asking in all anger what I had told my dad the day before. I was sooo scared. How did I dis my mom? I shook my head not knowing what to answer. She said I’d told him of living forever after dying, etc. ‘Ooh’, I just shrugged it off, ‘that’. My mom told me in no uncertain terms to never speak like that to my father again. Her anger was that he cried and didn’t let her sleep, not that I had scared him half to death.

A first experience after having met True Parents, was a prediction while out fundraising. Notoriously, I disliked - to understate - fundraising. In the van by the rear right window I rested my head. Suddenly, I shouted ‘the bomb is going to explode today’, surely not endearing myself to my CF. A short while later I screamed out ‘but it’s going to end well’.

A sister, T, was dropped off at a shopping center, the last one on a highway in Connecticut; the next exit was in Massachusetts. The last person T fundraised to was a policeman. After that a van pulled over next to T, a few men came out, shoved her in, and were on their way across the border into Massachusetts. A woman saw this, and shocked, ran to the policeman sitting in his car in the mall parking lot. She explained that the young girl who’d just sold him some product had been pushed into a van and taken away, i.e., kidnapped. The

FBI became involved because of interstate human trafficking. It was just a matter of minutes before T was in safe hands again. The bomb exploded but it all ended well.

Another sister in Barrytown was waiting for her parents to pick her up to go to lunch. I teased her and said, ‘be careful because you’re going to get kidnapped’. With a downward palm of the hand move she said ‘aw, Nick, my parents never would do something like that’. So she thought. It took her a few days to escape, but made it back.

There were more kidnapping ➞ deprogramming stories, including my own, but this is not what this paper is about.

Spirit world is not necessarily correct in its ways. They have a message to give, and they give it at any time they want, often in a very inopportune time. I’ve had many many experiences when spirit world is giving a message or answer or something while I’m in class with my students. I tell my students to please wait as I write down this message, invariably unrelated to the topic at hand. I’ve grown to be used to this irrelevant interruption..irrelevant to the situation at the moment. There’s no sense of time in spirit world. I think they just wait for the moment we on earth are in a receptive mode. Being ready for a student’s question or comment, I guess, is receptive enough for them.

The fact that we open up to their message at any specific moment, as untimely as it is, gives spirit world confidence that we are there for them.

I’d like to point the reader to Father’s June 1983 speeches where he often speaks of needing to welcome and let spirit world use us. In both their biographies, our True Parents speak at length of how important it is to allow spirit world to come down. Spiritual people often opened their paths. Spiritually open people are not always easy to work with, I’ve been on both sides of dealing with them here in the physical body. They are only allowed by Heavenly Parent to work in a public setting, so they must have something to offer us, giving us relevant information.

A word about spiritual people. People working with spiritual people, i.e., channels, etc. should in no way stop them but must check for principledness; many spiritual people are not principled. There are many spiritual people in society, I believe these are the ‘prepared’ people True Parents have often spoken about. They have lots of witnessing power, far more than we on earth do, True Parents tell us. They can bring others to True Parents with much less effort than we can. Remember, though, we are in the driver’s seat, subject position..always. Ultimately, we are responsible for all results, but we must not cut them off, neither the spirit nor the channeling person. Father often spoke about this. Heaven will give the returning resurrection person / people their due merit.