Blessing Education Courses Manual - Blessing 1 – Middle School Course and Blessing 101 – High School Course

Where did this Course come from?

This course(s) is the response to a mandate from God that I because aware of while I was mentoring some of our newly blessed, blessed children Blessed couple s. During a 2-year period from 2004 – 2006, I had the honor of hosting a Blessing support group consisting of a number of younger blessed children Blessed couple s. During this time, a realization grew within me that some of the struggles these young couples were facing could have been avoided, or at least quickly bypassed, had they entered the Blessing on the foundation of having received a solid education related to the meaning and course of the Blessing and a basic knowledge of how to respond to the challenges that occur in any marriage. Certainly a wealth of material related to these topics exists throughout the words and guidance of Our True Parents and there also exists a bounty of marriage support/enrichment material “out there”. The challenge lay in how to get such relevant material into the hands of those who could benefit from it at a time when they needed it and in a form they could understand and resonate with. Also, I am of the opinion that education related to these issues should start early, around the start of puberty – at the time when the spiritual consciousness of an individual is blossoming, and then keep pace with their growth of awareness of both their changing bodies and developing spirit. The following quote from the 47th Children’s Day speech by our True Parents is quite insightful: After we are born, we go through a process of growth. We pass through infancy and childhood in a very safe and secure environment under our parents’ love and protection. We then enter the time of adolescence, which signals the start of a new and dynamic life as we forge relationships on a totally new level with those around us, as well as with all things of creation. This is the moment when we begin to travel the path to becoming an absolute human being-internally, through the perfection of our character, and externally, by reaching adulthood.”

Anyway, as this awareness grew within me, ideas started coming to me in response to the need I was seeing around me. I ended up presenting those ideas to my support group in the form an afternoon “talk”. One of the most striking pieces of feedback I received was from a blessed child who heard this talk. Basically she said to me, “Why didn’t anyone ever tell us this before?” Fast forward to a conversation I had with a dear sister while I was attending the “Smart Marriage Conference” in 2006. I had a chance to explain the content of my talk, to which she said – “Alice, you must write this down”! I hesitated but in the end, wrote a short novelette (16 pages) on the topic of “Blessing is Fulfilling God’s Purpose of Creation and Restoration”. But I digress, back to the origin of this course. During the time that the above dynamic was progression, I attended a program called “Smart Marriage Conference”. One of the results of my attendance at this Conference was that I was compelled to set down on paper a strategy and developed goals related to my Blessed Family Department and Blessed children Blessing Department ministries.

One of the goals I had was to develop the course you will be receiving (which incorporates much of the ideas that are contained in my novelette). This goal came in response to my “seeing” an obvious and compelling need for material related to the Blessing that could contribute to the preparation for the Blessing that was integrated into the existing education and fellowship venues and the daily life of our young people during their middle and high school years. I reasoned that rather than waste my time in “cursing the darkness” because of the seeming lack of material on the Blessing available to growing blessed children, I should get busy and develop such a program, or “I should light a candle”. The preceding history was the genesis of these courses and the actual process of development has taken 7 months, beginning in September 18, 2006 and concluding on April 14, 2007, and involved some fellow visionaries, members of a curriculum committee (in alphabetical order – William Brunhofer, Alice Fleisher, Yongil Fleisher, Cynthia Hiromitsu, David Mahardy, Rev. Michael Hentrich Sr., Jas and Megan Smith and John Redmond. Also, the first group to hear this material participated in the further development of this course through their feedback and suggestions, especially Vicki Eagle, Naomi Hiromitsu, Ryan Mahardy and Kayo Tanimoto).

Why we are here and what will we be studying?

The Middle School course consists of 4 units – to be taught in a Sunday school venue on a yearly basis – on the following topics:

Unit 1: The Importance of Being Perfect Unit 2: The Purpose of the Blessing

Unit 3: Cultural Comparison Unit 4: The Value of Purity

The High School course consists of 12 units – 6 to be taught in a Sunday school venue on a yearly basis and 6 to be shared as a component of a youth fellowship program on a yearly basis – on the following topics:

Unit 1A and 2A: Presentation on the 3 Great Blessings Unit 2A and 2B: The Course of the Fall Unit 3A and 3B: The Purpose of the Blessing Unit 4A and 4B: Getting Ready for the Matching and Blessing Unit 5A and 5B: The Real Course of the Blessing Unit 6A and 6B: Tools and Guidance for a Successful Blessing and Family, including Tools for a Successful Spiritual Life.

Where are we going with this?

Hopefully, when our young people reach that point in their lives when they must decide about the Blessing, they will have acquired a wealth of wisdom and understanding to draw and reflect upon and refer to. Further, once they stand as a Blessed couple , hopefully this course (and others that may follow) will have given them tools and resources that can make their efforts on this path both successful and able to bear great fruit, resulting in their family’s and God’s Happiness!

BLESSING EDUCATION COURSE

BLESSING 1 – Middle School Course

Introduction to Blessing Principles

H.S.A.- U.W.C.

Blessed children Blessing Department

Denver, Colorado

April 16, 2007

Blessing 1- Unit 1 -Introduction to Blessing Principles – LESSON PLAN

Date: Lesson #: Week 1 Unit: Middle School Course: Blessing 1: Topic: The Importance of Being Perfect Introduction to Blessing Principles Instructor: Subject of Lesson:

Happiness & the 3 Blessings Purpose of life is to be happy How joy is produced 3 Blessings Why character matters in the Blessing Instructional Aids, Material, or Tools Needed:

Candy for Quizzes

References: Appendix G

Begin this unit with a brief presentation of Appendix G to give the students a general context and also present the Syllabus for the course so they will know from the outset what to expect.

Lesson Outline:

1. Introduction of program

2. Explanation of Candy Quiz

3. Purpose of Life & Relationships a. Happiness is the Purpose of Life i. True happiness, not transient happiness ii. Happiness is generated by relationships

4. 3 Blessings teaches us how to have good relationships a. Importance of Perfection in Relationships b. It is impossible to have good relationships if you are not a good person

5. Relational Physics a. If you do the right things you will succeed b. If you do not do the right things, you cannot possibly succeed.

6. Candy Quiz

Conclude the Presentation with a time for some discussion and feedback/status gathering with the participants.

Blessing 1- Unit 2 -Introduction to Blessing Principles – LESSON PLAN

Date: Lesson #: Week 2 Unit: Middle School Course: Blessing 1-Introduction to Blessing Topic: The Purpose of the Blessing Principles Instructor: Subject of Lesson:

Perfection with a Heavy Emphasis on Restoration Instructional Aids, Material, or Tools Needed:

Candy for candy quiz. Blessing Quarterly – Children’s story about the Blessing of the First Three Couples written by Linna Rapkins. References: Appendix A

Lesson Outline:

1. Two Purposes of the Blessing a. Perfection and living the reality of the Second Blessing – As a couple perfectly resembling the duality and unity of God who would be living is complete oneness of love and heart with God – That couple and their family would be a place to experience the greatest love and joy and at our core we all seek to be a couple. Such families are the schools of love, where children learn to love, bond with God and grow to Perfection. The family is the base from which helps God to accomplish the realization and maintenance of the extended Second Blessing or the Clan, Tribe, Nation, World and Cosmos. b. Restoration - Because we are actually Blessed before we have fulfilled the First Blessing (Quote from Blessing Quarterly about the first 3 Couples Blessing)

He talked about many things, but after a while he started talking about perfection. “If you give up everything you own and work as hard as you can and get hardly any sleep and are absolutely, you MIGHT become perfect in about 70 years,” he said. “Furthermore, that could only happen if you had been a good person all your life and if your ancestors were good people, as well.”…Father continued, “And you know by now that becoming perfect yourself is the first blessing, and getting married is the second blessing. If you are married before you are perfected as an individual, your marriage will have many problems. Ahl-ah-yo? (Do you understand?)…But, we have a problem here,” said Father. “If we wait until you are fully perfected, no one will ever get married while on earth, at least not until

you’re too old to have children. Yet Heavenly Father cannot be happy until he has blessed families all around him.” This appeared to be an impossible situation. You have to be perfect to be married, but God can’t be happy if you aren’t blessed in marriage. Father’s eves focused on one person and then another as he looked around the room to see if they understood. “So,” he continued, “Heavenly Father wants a few of you to be blessed now.

2. Individual purpose a. Make you a better person 3. Whole Purpose a. Make the world a better place

4. Why relationships are difficult a. Because we aren’t perfect b. Because the people we relate with aren’t perfect c. Because of all the spirits constantly trying to live through us

5. Spirit World Game (Appendix A)

6. Candy Quiz

Conclude the Presentation with a time for some discussion and feedback/status gathering with the participants.

Blessing 1- Unit 3 -Introduction to Blessing Principles – LESSON PLAN

Date: 12/16/06 Lesson #: Week 3 Unit: Middle School Course: Blessing 1: Topic: Cultural Comparison

Introduction to Blessing Principles

Subject of Lesson:

A comparison between arranged marriages and dating based relationships and the culture propagated by both.

Instructional Aids, Material, or Tools Needed:

Flip Chart, Markers,

Candy for quiz

Lesson Outline:

1. Definitions a. Ask participants to define an Arranged Marriage b. Ask participants to define a Dating Relationship

2. Comparison a. Ask participants to compare the two. b. Make a list of pros and cons for dating c. Make a list of pros and cons for arranged marriages 3. There are two key differences: a. The first is how the person meets their partner. b. The second is the reason they are getting married. c. The difference is really a matter of origin points. The purpose of this is to show that there isn’t really all that much different about the two. However, generally speaking, in arranged marriages the motivation tends to be less selfish.

4. Discuss each of the things listed with the class a. The main role of the instructor is to play the part of a facilitator. b. Try to get the participants to really delve in deep and examine the things they think to be true about both types of relationships.

5. Candy Quiz

Conclude the Presentation with a time for some discussion and feedback/status gathering with the participants.

Assignments:

Blessing 1- Unit 4 -Introduction to Blessing Principles – LESSON PLAN

Date: 12/16/06 Lesson #: Week 4 Unit: Middle School Course: Blessing 1-Introduction to Blessing Topic: The Value of Purity Principles Instructor: Subject of Lesson:

The Value of Purity Instructional Aids, Material, or Tools Needed:

Lesson Outline:

Review the fall of man, 1. False love vs. true love (Candy Quiz?) a. To have true love you have to have maturity based on purity b. We all have needs; how do we truly fulfill them 2. The process of the fall 3. God’s lineage vs. Satan’s lineage a. How the world is practicing Satan’s traditions 4. Effects of the fall a. People are not happy b. Show how Satan hooks them (music, shows, tv, etc) c. It doesn’t work, tear away the facade, and what do you see

Restoration 1. We need the Messiah for the change of blood lineage a. We have to become original people b. Set traditions and build habits to maintain purity 2. Make a list of the effects of the fall a. It all boils down to the misuse of love b. We are being taken advantage of c. Being played for fools 3. Why we don’t want to be taken advantage of. a. We want to be able to be as happy as possible

4. How and why we need to protect ourselves? a. We set traditions so that we can keep from misusing love b. Make a list of traditions that we can practice to maintain purity of mind body and spirit c. If we don’t practice these traditions it could lead to the misuse of love

Conclusion 1. Our cultural counter-point a. Our hope is to give you another point of view so you can make a well informed decision b. The key to being happy is a mix between being a good person, and knowing the laws that govern happiness 2. The purpose of the Blessing is to make you a better person and make the world a better place a. The Blessing is about creating a more meaningful marriage b. We can build a better world by creating true families

Conclude the Presentation with a time for some discussion and feedback/status gathering with the participants.

BLESSING EDUCATION COURSE

BLESSING 101 – High School Course

Investigation of Blessing Principles

H.S.A.- U.W.C.

Blessed children Blessing Department

Denver, Colorado

April 16, 2007

Blessing 101 –Unit 1 A & B – Investigation of Blessing Principles - LESSON PLAN

Date: 1/6/07 Lesson #: Week 1 – Sunday Unit: High School School and youth fellowship program Course: Blessing 101 – Investigation of Blessing Topic: Presentation on the 3 Great Principles Blessings

Subject of Lesson:

Happiness and the 3 Blessings – Purpose of life is to be happy, How joy is produced, 3 Blessings and Happiness, Why character matters in the Blessing

Instructional Aids, Material, or Tools Needed:

Begin this unit with a brief presentation of Appendix F, G, and H – to give the students a general context and Syllabus for the course so they will know from the outset what to expect.

Lesson Outline:

Creating the God Within 7 Roles of Life centered on the 3 Great Blessings “God blessed them, saying: “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth.”

1st Blessing- “Be fruitful”. Mature one’s character and heart to become a True Son/ Daughter of God 2nd Blessing- “Multiply”. Enter into a Divine union with your spouse, create a family and be part of God’s whole family of mankind. 3rd Blessing- “ Take Dominion”. Enter into a relationship with the creation that is longing for the love of God’s Children, and the world we create will be a Kingdom of peace, abundance and beauty.

The ultimate evolution of every human soul is to reach the place of total enlightenment. This complete fulfillment of purpose can be known as the perfection of the 3 Great Blessings. In them we are given the highest value of the individual, the power to re-create through love, and the ability to shape the world to our greatest imaginings. God gives us this blueprint for the sole purpose that we, His children, may share in the very experience and motivation that God felt for His Creation.

God desires that we are His child, His friend, His equal. To strive in fulfilling the 3 Great Blessings is by far the most valuable use of one’s days while here in this fleeting physical life. Let us work together and support each other on this incredible journey to our God consciousness .

7 Roles to a fulfilling Life The following outline is based upon the positions found within the 3 Great Blessings with two roles per Blessing. The seventh role reflects the reality that we, the people who know the 3 Blessings, are in the position to share this gift with others, and will naturally do so as an extension of our awareness that we are all connected as God’s Family.

Role #1 Eternal Child of God 1st Blessing, Internal Character Intellect: The deepest value of my life can be understood when I grasp the reality that I am a child of God  I know God Created the universe for the purpose of having children in His Image  I study the wisdom of the ages to understand man’s relationship to God  I remain ever conscious of the Parent/Child relationship I have in the living God What daily practice of affirmation and prayer am I keeping to firmly root the reality of my value and relationship with my Parent God?

What book of wisdom am I reading today?

What groups/organizations do I attend or support that nurture people’s belief to be a child of God?

Emotion: The essence of God and His Energy is LOVE - therefore, my essence and energy is LOVE.  I keep Love and Peace of mind as my #1 goal through out my day  I am a love finder. I choose always to forgive, accepting forgiveness for myself.  I wish to experience only love, for that is the only thing that is eternal and will last

How do I stay conscious to Love in each moment ?

Do I see my time and energy as a gift of Love that is given freely and returned abundantly?

Do I take time at the end of a day to be grateful for moments of Love and learn from lessons of Love?

Will: As I grow in truth and Love, I naturally grow into the fullness of who I am; the Unique, eternal character of myself.  I am responsible for who I am, and how I grow my Character  I am confident in being a unique incarnation of God’s character  I return Joy to God and to my fellow man by being myself to the fullest

What do I do today that makes me happy to be myself, and proud of the person I have become?

What can I do to grow my character to become an even greater expression of my unique Divinity?

Do I give others the permission to express their unique selves by not judging but always forgiving?

Role #2 Physical Life; Vehicle for Spiritual Growth 1st Blessing external position Intellect: I live my physical life to the fullest  I live intentionally, knowing my time in the body is limited  I keep awareness of my priorities, and envision my future goals  I schedule my time and fulfill my responsibilities

Emotion: My surroundings are an extension of myself  I manage life affairs in an orderly way  I keep a clean and beautiful environment  I treat my possessions with respect and gratitude

Will: My body is the temple of my soul  I watch what I put into my body, as it is what I eat.  I strengthen my body with recreation, and avoid stress with pleasurable outlets.  I respect my body with good hygiene, proper manners and respectful dress

 Share opinions about how one can make the best use of time while in this body

 How important is life management skills to living a productive life?

 Is an unhealthy body a reflection of an unhealthy soul?

 Why don’t spiritually minded people put more emphasis on great health?

 How is experiencing physical pleasure an intrinsic part of God’s Blessing to man?

Role #3 United Couple in the Image of God 2nd Blessing, Dual Characteristics

Intellect: My spouse and I are a microcosmic image of God  We align our beliefs on the sacredness of reflecting God’s completed nature  We reveal God’s duality of which we can only know fully through each other  We contemplate on the magnanimous value of our lives together for eternity

Emotion: Our Love is the source of Joy and Power  We are always considerate of how to better support each others growth  We feel great joy to support each others happiness  We experience God’s Creation power in our own intimacy

Will: Our couple is the model of a blissful marriage  We are an inspiration and vision of God upon this earth  We are the center of love for our family and our tribe  We reach out to other couples to support the sanctity of marriage.

 Share how your couple strengthens the Godhead image of your marriage

 How do you see your couple in eternity?

 What consistent routines do you practice to support each others growth?

 How has Father Moon’s guidance about intimacy enhance your love life?

 How does your couple support other couple’s relationship?

Role #4 Family; the School of Love nd 2 Blessing, Creating Children and Family Intellect: God’s longing is to be one with all His Children  We embrace God’s hope to have all His children dwell eternally in His Love  We know the reality that all those souls who died now live in the Spiritual world  We know the reality of the fall and the course of history to restore God’s family.

Emotion: We know fully God’s Parental Love  God’s parental heart can only be known by loving from the position of a parent  We grow to have a parental heart in all our relationships  We want to protect and nurture the soul of others when we love as a parent

Will: The Homeland of God begins in our own home  Our family lives in the realm of heart as God intended in the original Homeland  We invite our relatives and friends into the experience of God’s Homeland  We expand God’s Homeland on the earth, Family by loving Family

Discussion Questions:

 How can we grasp the truth that all mankind are children of the same Parents?

 What is our families place between Ancestors and Descendants?

 Share why it is important to cultivate a parental heart toward all people

 How does your family brings others into the experience of God’s Homeland?

Role #5 Vocation 3rd Blessing Co-Creator Intellect: I focus my mind on my value adding/wealth  Creation contributions  I accept my minds ability to move and expand the Universal Prime Energy.  I empower my life with possibility thinking  I gain knowledge and expertise in the areas of Creation that return joy to me

Emotion: My time and energy are given with passion to help  The visions of what I would create are driven by my love for others.  I invest my time and energy, receiving beauty, happiness and blessing in return  Since Love is the essence of all Matter, I manifest from a place of love

Will: Abundance is the natural results of my Manifestation  My life’s work creates wealth and adds value to all of mankind  Goodness and Blessing multiplies profusely from my work, like fruit on a tree  I have truly become a Creator of goodness and beauty; like Father, like Son  I am manifesting my vocation NOW.  Serve others in the Financial Concepts area.

Role #6 Child of the Peace Kingdom 3rd Blessing; Lord of the Creation Intellect: I see God in the Creation, and the Creation sees God in Me  God’s symbolic image is in all things, and longs to be a part of the Children  The Principles for living can be observed in the character and form of the creation  The physical universe is the body, as the Spiritual universe is the mind.

Emotion: All Creation longs to reciprocate Love with me  As the Lord of Creation, I dominate all things with the heart of True Love  The Creation receives my Love, and returns to me Her Goodness and Beauty  I joyfully partake in the creation that gives abundantly to all

Will: The Ideal of Peaceful planet is being realized  We will build institutions of goodness while overcoming scarcity and poverty  We take our places as leaders and citizens to the Homeland of God.  We participate in the fullness of Life that God hopes for all His Children

Discussion Questions:

 In what setting do I most deeply experience the Character of God ?

 How do I experience being a Lord to the Creation?

 Share about your last vacation

 What can we do to be better stewards of the Creation?

 What do you want to do with the Creation before you pass from this world?

Role #7 Messenger of the 3 Great Blessings Had the Original Ideal of God been fulfilled, the 3 Great Blessings would be realized in all people’s lives. Since that did not come to pass, we who are called to this path are also called to build the world where the 3 Great Blessings can at last flourish and reign. That is the meaning of the 7th Role. It is the path of the Matraya Buddha; the final conclusion that true enlightenment will always find

Intellect: The Peace Kingdom begins with me  My life is the embodiment and example of the 3 Great Blessings  Because of the Fall, no one has ever fulfilled the 3 Blessings, until now!  I constantly prospect for prepared people who are longing to find this truth.

Emotion: I am passionate to share the 3 Great Blessings  I communicate the Blessings in a way that move people’s original mind  I genuinely desire to empower people on how to live their lives more fully  As I convey God’s heart and His Blessing, people change their live

Will: Leader and Motivator to spread the Blessings to All  I am a Central Figure in the Providence of Restoration  My efforts are duplicated as I work with others to share the Blessings  We are living testimonies to the glory of the 3 Great Blessings; Lead by example

Discussion Questions:

 How do I put out to people that I know God’s 3 Great Blessings?

 What do I communicate through out a day that speaks to peoples original minds?

 Share about how you made a difference in someone’s life.

 Do you see yourself as a leader in the Providence to bring God’s Blessings to all.

Conclude the Presentation with a time for some discussion and feedback/status gathering with the participants.

Blessing 101 – Unit 2A – Investigation of Blessing Principles - LESSON PLAN

Date: Lesson #: Week 2 - High Unit: High School School Sunday school Course: Blessing 101 - Investigation of Blessing Topic: The Course of the Fall Principles Instructor: Subject of Lesson: Presentation encompasses topics to include the root of sin, the motivation and process of the Fall, as well as results of the fall. It provides a base for students to gain an understanding about the nature of sin and fallen nature which is essential to charting any genuine course to the Blessing. This lesson also underlines the importance of, and need for, following the Principles of Restoration, critical to eliminating fallen nature, maintaining purity, recovering original nature and lineage, and hence laying a foundation for eternal Blessing. Instructional Aids, Material, or Tools Needed:

1.) Blackboard/Whiteboard 2.) Lesson Handouts 3.) Computer generated Slide/Graphic Presentation on the Fall

References: DP Level II - Appendix D – Teacher’s notes

Course Objectives: 1) Build on vision developed in Chapter 1. 2) Understand the course and motivation of the fall, not just the biblical part. 3) Apply lessons of the fall to ones own life. 4) Feel and understand the danger of a Blessed Child fall to the lineage, destiny and spiritual life. 5) Identify personal ‘looking for love’ moments 6) Danger Signs and Protecting Yourself

Preface: There is a reason why God, TF, your parents, and I don’t want you to fall. Its not because it’s a rule, it’s because it’s a mistake. We do not want to see you go through that pain and suffering that comes about because of the fall.

Get this silly childish notion that ‘the Fall is Sex’ out of your head. The Fall is, at its root, the inheritance of Satan’s ‘me first’ culture. Sex is the point of no return, not the point of origin. (Possibly see Appendix E: Sex and the Fall of Man)

Once you’ve done something involving sexuality, you’ve done it. There is no rewind button to life, you can be forgiven by those you have offended, but that does not change the fact that you did what you did. It simply means you do not have to pay indemnity to that person that forgave you. That mark will be with you forever, and even if you hide it behind a white robe, it is still there. We do not want you to have scars; we want you to be happy.

Why the fall is so painful:

 The fall of man was not just a sexual act, but rather a paradigm shift. An about face (180 degree move) from a selfless culture to a selfish culture, and sex was the culmination of this shifted mindset.

 Love is given to those who give it first, a reciprocal relationship. This is why in the ‘ideal world’ living for the sake of others gives us the greatest joy, by serving other people we receive the love and admiration of those we serve. They give us what we need to fulfill our spiritual needs; they give us value, respect, understanding, and love.

 A fallen culture robs of us of these things. By only living for ourselves we reap the things that are opposite to our needs. People come to fear and hate us, they dislike us because we do not care for them. We manipulate and use another in order to feel good, this leads others to feel misused and unvalued, and while they fulfill our needs for a short time, in the long run we become unsatisfied and lonely because they cannot love us back because of how we treated them.

 There is no greater example of this short term gain by abuse and manipulation then fallen sex. It is the thesis of a fallen culture, and the culmination of a life lived with a ‘me first’ mentality.

Ideal of Happiness

 We are meant to live in a world of joy. We go through the four realms of heart, finding happiness as a child, brother/sister, spouse, and parent. In such a world we would receive the love we need from childhood and into the afterlife. We would naturally fulfill both our needs and desires – which is a natural part of our human existence. As a child, this process is usually contained with the dynamic relationship found in the family. As we reach adolescence, this process would expand to include a multitude of exciting experiences in a larger social and natural world context that would teach us and inspire us (based on reflection) and lead us to complete our original self.

 As part of the growing period/realm of indirect dominion, we grow naturally into a zone of free-will where God does not directly guide us – called adolescence. He designed us to be guided by our original nature/conscience and his words. An original child was meant to reflect to on their experiences in the context of their original nature and God’s word and by their free-will become their ideal self and fully resonate and realize God’s presence in their being.

 Originally the sum of your choices would let you create yourself and become a brilliant person (though you might for awhile be stuck in the stage of being a mediocre person or very underdeveloped). Your greatest happiness comes from completely developing and manifesting your unique potential as a person of God (the first Blessing). Each person has a general set of skills from being human but also has a unique set of gifts that they will discover and develop. The passion of the Principle is in this process of “creating” yourself.

Process of the Fall:

 The original process described above would not have included anything, or a realm, apart from the Principle or growth to the ideal. In the original process, when a person fails to use their free-will constructively and positively to manifest their God given potential, they naturally limit their experiences and choices. The process of the Fall was a whole different scenario. This set up a crisis situation – the entry into the picture of a potentially deadly force. However, the way to counter and protect themselves from this attack was also available to Adam and Eve. What we need to study is what should have happened and also how the process went terribly wrong, based on the choices that Adam and Eve made. We study this to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and also to choose to make the right choices in our lives. We also study this to know how the enemy works and to avoid being victims of his craft.

 The original Adam and Eve didn’t choose to pay attention to God’s Word and ideal. Other things became more important such as their immediate feelings and appetites. When the force of love came into the picture, they didn’t have the relationship with God and therefore they did not truly know who they were destined to be. They followed their feelings, responded to the temptation which resulted in their fall. They made the choice to not follow God’s way or correctly fulfill their portion of responsibility.

What Happens Today

 Today, we live in a world where at birth we do not receive true love from our parents, we do not receive fulfilling love from our siblings or spouse, and we do not give true love to our children. This leaves us unsatisfied and unfulfilled because our most basic spiritual needs have not been met.

 Part of the process of the fall is a story of wrong choices (trying to satisfy spiritual hunger or a need for love), that may end up with a single monumental decision, but is proceeded by a confluence of small choices that drives us in one direction or another.

 The purpose of free will and Co-Creatorship is that it allows us to make the choices that create happiness. The difference between long-term, complete happiness and the short-term, self-destructive happiness is the direction and the motivation behind the choice.

Conclude the Presentation with a time for some discussion and feedback/status gathering with the participants.

Assignments:

Blessing 101 – Unit 2B – Investigation of Blessing Principles – LESSON PLAN

Date: Lesson #: Week 2 High Unit: High School School age youth fellowship program Course: Blessing 101 – Investigation of Blessing Topic: The Course of the Fall Principles Instructor: Subject of Lesson: Fall of Man, Danger Signs, and How to Avoid Falling

Instructional Aids, Material, or Tools Needed:

 Blackboard/Whiteboard  Lesson Handouts  Computer generated Slide/Graphic Presentation on the Fall

References: DP Level II - Appendix D – Teacher’s notes Appendix E Appendix J

Course Objectives: 1) Build on vision developed in Chapter 1. 2) Understand the course and motivation of the fall as it is constantly repeated daily, not just the biblical story. 3) Apply lessons of the fall to ones own life. Feel and understand the danger of a Blessed Children fall to the lineage, destiny and spiritual life. a) Identify personal ‘looking for love’ moments b) Danger Signs and Protecting Yourself

VOICE Outline 1) We all know what the fall is; we’ve heard about it since we were little kids. To some extent I would say we as Blessed Children have become desensitized to it. It’s not real and it is not personal.

2) In order to avoid falling we have to do two broad things. i) First we have to recognize what the fall is and why it is both disgusting and relevant. ii) Secondly we have to learn how to defend ourselves

3) Be able to recognize how the fall is happening all the time i) The fall is not just sex. Sex is the point of no return on the path of inheriting Satan’s culture; it is the absolute perversion of a selfless thing into a selfish thing. The fall is as much a mindset as it is an action. 4) The fall of man was when Adam and Eve bought into Satan’s culture, and owned it. It became a key part of their identity. i) The fall happens every day, and it always follows a basic outline. A template if you will. (a) Person feels lonely, empty, hated, misunderstood, etc. They are in a state of wanting, needing something in order to feel good. 5) There are two ways to get away from this feeling. i) One is to indemnify the situation by confronting what caused the problem in the first place and resolving it. ii) The other is to ignore it and does something that brings you joy to help forget about how you feel. iii) Dating is a wonderful example of this. We go out with a person because they make us feel good, entering into a relationship with them because they make us feel better. We don’t really care about them, but we are going after the feeling we get by being around them. iv) Eventually we become fixated on this feeling, we become addicts to it. We chase after it, disregarding the needs of others for our own pleasure. We chase short term happiness and very often manipulate others (parents, friends, partners, etc) in order to get it. This is the starting point of the fall.

6) What parts of our culture are results of the fall, which things do we do as a society that reflect Satanic culture? (Make a List) i) See what things are derived from the fall ii) See how it happens every day iii) See how we have a choice to not do these things iv) Be able to protect yourself from it v) The best way to avoid falling is to not have give and take with fallen nature.

7) By entering into relationships with things in the fallen culture we give them power over us (we make the choice to let them affect us.)

8) The best way to avoid letting these things influence us is to separate ourselves from these things. So we need to recognize them, then not have give and take with them. <FIND A GAME>

9) The fall is not just one the big action; it is all the little actions i) The small decisions we make every day in our lives are the ones that dictate how we will act when a big decision comes around. ii) In order to avoid ‘falling’ the trick isn’t to not have sex, but to not make the small choices that lowers our barriers and opens ourselves up for the fall to take place.

iii) <SHOW A MOVIE CLIP: Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam – Cross This Line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkzWyOaS8kU >

10) Have at least two of these three: Faith, Truth, and Community i) Our spirits are made of three broad areas: emotion, intellect, and will. In order to be what we consider a perfect person each of these three areas needs to be fully matured. ii) Funnily enough, temptation comes from these three areas. When we are tempted away from the correct path the temptation comes from faith, understanding, or friends. (a) Faith: Trust that overpowers knowledge or lack thereof (b) Truth (Understanding): Understanding and Knowledge (c) Community (Friends): A place where you feel acceptance and love 11) So in order to avoid falling you must have faith in the right things, an understanding of how things really work, and a place where you can find support and love to keep doing the things that faith and truth guide you to do. (Purpose of our youth fellowship programs is to provide these three things)

Conclude the Presentation with a time for some discussion and feedback/status gathering with the participants.

Assignments:

Blessing 101 – Unit 3A – Investigation of Blessing Principles LESSON PLAN

Date: Lesson #3A: Week 3 – High Unit: High School School Sunday school

Course: Blessing 101 – Investigation of Blessing Topic: The Purpose of the Principles Blessing Instructor: Subject of Lesson: Living the reality of the Second Blessing / Growing into the reality of the Second Blessing and Restoration

Instructional Aids, Material, or Tools Needed: Candy for Quizzes

Lesson Outline:

Second Blessing Life:

 The Original Plan for the Blessing is to be a place where we would be living the reality of the Second Blessing. As a couple perfectly resembling the “duality yet unity” of God and a place to participate in the creative power of God, they would experience oneness of love and heart with God on the greatest level. Since they would be able to be the ultimate/ fullest/ ideal/substantial object and reflection of God – The couple would become a place to experience the greatest love and joy - at our core we all seek to be a couple. What is the image of a perfectly fused couple? Think of an image of a couple where each can finish the sentences of the other, they function as one being where the man is the skin and the woman is the heart and backbone. This couple operates as one being, enlarges each other, uplifts each other and gives each other the qualities that complete the other. Behind every great man is a great woman and vice versa! Look at the images projected in great poetry – these great writers are enthralled with the image of the ideal couple.

 As the couple becomes a family, it then becomes the school of love, where children learn to love, bond with God and grow to Perfection

 The base from which we help God in the realization and maintenance of the extended Second Blessing - Clan, Tribe, Nation, World and Cosmos – The Kingdom of God.

Restoration and Growth: 1) The responsibility of the Messiah is to indemnify and cut the root of sin through the First Generation Blessing. i) The “separation from sin” part of Rebirth is a spectrum and a progression. ii) It is the responsibility of each new generation in this lineage to further this process and through many generations we will completely purify and eliminate personal, hereditary and collective sin. iii) This takes time and takes work (monkey on my back, ball and chain, fishhook image), the culture and environment definitely is part of the mix.

2) We are Blessed prior to being Perfect i) Love isn’t about finding the right person but about being the right person ii) You have to work at perfecting the relationship. This means that you have to grow the love in your relationship (infatuation vs True Love) and build the joy in your couple and family (Blessing is a Process and Opportunity, not a gift).

Show a section from your preferred marriage education DVD on building relationships.

Conclude the Presentation with a time for some discussion and feedback/status gathering with the participants.

Blessing 101 – Unit 3B – Investigation of Blessing Principles - LESSON PLAN

Date: Lesson #: Week 3 – High Unit: High School School youth fellowship program Course: Blessing 101 – Investigation of Blessing Topic: The Purpose of the Principles Blessing Instructor: Subject of Lesson:

Perfection / Restoration Instructional Aids, Material, or Tools Needed:

The “Blessing is Fulfilling God’s Purpose of Creation and Restoration” talk by Alice Fleisher – Appendix F

References: Appendix F Appendix B Appendix C Appendix H Appendix I

Lesson Outline:

 Presentation of the “Blessing is Fulfilling God’s Purpose of Creation and Restoration” talk written by Alice Fleisher (absolutely don’t read, just summarize). Each year this Presentation will be followed by a game that focuses on the ideas presented in the “Blessing is Fulfilling God’s Purpose of Creation and Restoration” talk. Some examples are listed below: 1. Indemnity Game (See appendix B) 2. Relationship Game (see appendix C)

Conclude the Presentation with a time for some discussion and feedback/status gathering with the participants.

Blessing 101- Unit 4A – Investigation of Blessing Principles LESSON PLAN

Date: 1/3/07 Lesson #: Week 4 – High Unit: High School School Sunday school Course: Blessing 101 – Investigation of Blessing Topic: Getting Ready for the Principles Matching and Blessing Instructor: Subject of Lesson: The is the section in the course when the students should begin to personally work out a strategy to prepare themselves to get matched and stand as a Blessed Central Family

Instructional Aids, Material, or Tools Needed:

Flip Chart or White Board - to write down ideas References:

Lesson Outline:

 Now that you have a sense of the larger context and meaning of the Matching and Blessing, lets take some time to develop a “Preparation Strategy “to help you get ready for the Blessing. We’ll begin this by your coming up with and giving me your ideas and suggestions for this process (This exercise is a chance for them to brainstorm and give suggestions) So, lets brainstorm about how you can prepare yourself to be the right person and also, when you enter the matching process, how you can prepare yourself to receive God’s choice. I will follow this step by adding some of my ideas for how you can prepare yourself to be the right person and prepare yourself to receive God’s choice for your eternal partner.

Presenter’s ideas for preparing yourself to be the right person:

 The beginning point of your getting ready for the blessing is about your becoming a really good person. So, the best way to prepare for the blessing is to develop a mature character. What are ways to become a person with a mature character? What does a mature person act and think like? It’s not about finding the right person but being the right person.

 Set good habits, everything comes down to getting used to doing certain things. One of the powers of conditions is that it is a good way to get into a habit.

 Develop a strong prayer life (regular communication with God) so that we can get to know God.

 Develop a strong practice of studying God’s Words and participate in HHK.

 Include opportunities for Public Service in your life. This allows you to get a lot of spiritual support and to set good conditions. It also allows you to get beyond yourself and develop an other oriented perspective.

 Make it a practice to study those who exemplify strong character, attitudes, and practices including your parents, exemplary members and True Parents and try to incorporate those practices and attitudes into your own life.

Prepare yourself for the Blessing and to receive God’s choice for your eternal partner.

 Talk to your parents and other blessed couple s (especially couples consisting of blessed children) to elicit their ideas and get their testimonies.

 Set prayer and study conditions to help you understand about the Blessing and also to prepare yourself to receive God’s choice. This practice can be started as soon as you begin to think and wonder about the Blessing. When you enter into the matching process, blessed children and Jacob’s children should purchase and read the “Family Matching Handbook”, while 1st generation children should read “Finding the One”. I would also suggest studying the book “Blessing and Ideal Family”.

 Keep a vertical dimension to your matching. You should be focused on finding God’s choice for your eternal partner.

 Be aware that the Blessing often comes at a time in your life when you are charged with a lot of emotions and feeling but not a lot of life wisdom. Surround yourself with and act upon the wisdom from vertical element in your lives so as not to harbor a ton of regret that must be cleaned up later in your life.

 Don’t be too nervous, everyone being matched has also been preparing in their life of faith and faces similar challenges. Just remember to own this process and that you have the power to make it successful. Remember that ultimately the reason for the Blessing is your happiness.

 Once you’re into the process, it’s important that you are prepared to accept the other person for who they are and understand that they are in the process of growing themselves as well. With this understanding, we can empower each other, forgive each other and encourage each other. Just remember that this process of change takes time and needs patience.

 Matchings can bring together people of very different cultures, ethnic groups, and circumstances; individuals who are very different in every way possible and who may be total strangers, i.e., they may not even speak your own language. Therefore an open mind and heart are really necessary.

The end of the session will entail a summing up of our brainstorming session and a chance for them to begin the process of setting up a “Blessing Preparation Plan” regarding this important part of their future. The presenter will refer to this section of the “Family Matching Handbook” for blessed children and Jacob’s children and “Finding the One” for 1st generation children. Start the process in this session but then continue the process with their parents and other people they feel close to. Part of this process would be to understand how to develop goal setting skills.

Conclude the Presentation with a time for some discussion and feedback/status gathering with the participants.

Blessing 101 – Unit 4B – Investigation of Blessing Principles LESSON PLAN

Date: Lesson #: Week 4 – High Unit: High School School youth fellowship program Course: Blessing 101: Topic: Getting Ready for the Investigation of Blessing Principles Matching and Blessing Instructor:

Subject of Lesson:

Based on the foundation of the Sunday School session, we will have a panel of parents and blessed children couples to give testimonies and talk about their own Matching and Blessing experience.

Instructional Aids, Material, or Tools Needed:

Parents and blessed children Blessed couple s

Lesson Outline: This session will consist of a panel presentation and a chance for questions and answers.

Conclude the Presentation with a time for some discussion and feedback/status gathering with the participants.

Blessing 101 – Unit 5A – Investigation of Blessing Principles LESSON PLAN

Date: Lesson #: Week 5 – High Unit: High School School – Sunday school Course: Blessing 101: Topic: The Real Course of the Investigation of Blessing Principles Blessing Instructor: Subject of Lesson:

Matching / The Blessing Preparation and Ceremony / Life as a couple after the Ceremony / Children and Beyond. Instructional Aids, Material, or Tools Needed:

Sample of material that can be used

Candy for Quiz References:

Lesson Outline:

The Logistics:

The Matching Process  When will you be ready?  Get educated – attend Blessing preparation workshops before and after you are matched.

Matching Protocol & Requirements  With True Parents  With Physical Parents  Getting to know your spouse  This starts immediately after matching and goes on for eternity!

The Blessing Ceremony  Forms to fill out, Blessing Fee, travel arrangements need to be made  Getting everything ready

Look at blessing photos (Both 1st and 2nd gen)

After the Blessing Ceremony – what’s next?  We strongly recommend that you have a period of public mission (pre or post Blessing) in your life. This could include participation in STF, a general program, missionary work, RYS, etc.

You need to establish a strategy to achieve success as a Blessed Central Family: a. Practice the lifestyle of True Love, Living for the sake of your spouse and then children. b. Gain the tools needed to work on your spiritual life c. Gain the tools needed to work on your relationship. d. In this stage of the providence, our Blessings are conditional, which means that each partner must continue to work on achieving the first Blessing (individual perfection) as well as investing in and perfecting their second Blessing (family and society) life. e. You need to support each other’s spiritual growth and learn how to and work at developing the relationship. f. You and your spouse need to agree on a strategy for managing the practical dimensions of your family life including financial, household responsibilities, parenting responsibilities, and intimacy. i. Read Steven Stacey’s Book, “Understanding Marriage: Partners, Friends, Lovers” for help with this step. g. Network, connect to, and contribute to a community of Blessed Central Families h. Read books and speeches from True Parents on Blessed Central Family Life i. Attend educational programs and events on Blessed Central Family Life j. Read books and speeches from True Parents on post-Blessing Parenting k. Read books (Men are from Mars, Women from Venus, etc) l. Point system (how men and women tally points) m. Learn about the types of Love Language n. Learn how to fight fair (rules of engagement) o. Speaker Listener

If you do the right things, you will succeed; if you do not do the right things you cannot possibly succeed (relational physics)

This is how the feeling and content of Love really grows and works – Infatuation vs True Love.

Sample of the resources that can be used – , bcf-ed.org website, books, DVDs, CDs

Conclude the Presentation with a time for some discussion and feedback/status gathering with the participants.

Blessing 101 – Unit 5B – Investigation of Blessing Principles LESSON PLAN

Date: Lesson #: Week 5 – High Unit: High School School youth fellowship program Course: Blessing 101 – Investigation of Blessing Topic: The Real Course of the Principles Blessing Instructor: Subject of Lesson:

What being Blessed is really about/what happens in the Blessing/ Tough but Beautiful and very HARD WORK! This program will look at the need to develop relationships, just one of the areas that couples need to invest in to achieve a success in their Blessing. Instructional Aids, Material, or Tools Needed:

Mark Gungor’s DVD or other DVD’s on relationship building (cycle them over a 4 year period)

Lesson Outline:

 This program’s focus is on how to build a successful relationship, just one of the areas that you need to invest in to become a successful a Blessed Central Family. The amount of effort that you place in this one area alone needs to be replicated in ALL of the line items suggested in the previous unit. The process of creating a successful Blessed Central Family is HARD WORK!

 For your Blessed Central Family to become successful, you will, of course, continue to pursue your personal path to spiritual and professional perfection. But now, as a Blessed Central Family, you will also need to support for your spouse’s efforts to deepen and mature their own spiritual and professional life. And most importantly you also have to think like a couple; it is no longer the case of you and me but US. Compromises and sacrifices will be required of both of you. You can no longer live your life thinking that your partner is interfering with your personal and professional plans. You also need to come up with a strategy that encompasses your combined faithful lives to include your couple’s involvement with your church community, ministry investment, and public service. Whatever strategy your couple comes up with for your future path must be a collaborative decision. This is the heart that emerges from our faith ethic of living for the sake

of others. One piece of good advice I received at the outset of my Blessing was that the couple is established for the sake of my spouse, our children, and our future joint mission. Nowhere in that equation is the understanding that the couple is established for the sake of me.  One additional point is that you’re Blessing and Blessed Central Family life happens in the midst of life not out of life. Also, you must seriously pioneer the way to bring the G-element (GOD) into the process and your Blessed Central Family. Remember, we are concerned with True Love, not infatuation.

 Show a DVD on relationships and couple consciousness and let the participants know that the program featured represents just one sample of supportive material that they can access on the topic of Relationships.

Conclude the Presentation with a time for some discussion and feedback/status gathering with the participants.

Blessing 101 –Unit 6 A & B – Investigation of Blessing Principles LESSON PLAN

Date: Lesson #: Week 6 – High Unit: High School School – Sunday school and youth fellowship program Course: Blessing 101: Topic: Tools to Create a Investigation of Blessing Principles successful Blessing and Family = Tools for a successful Spiritual Life. Instructor: Subject of Lesson:

Need to develop a strategy and tactics for creating success in your Blessing

Instructional Aids, Material, or Tools Needed:

Sample of material that can be used

Candy for Quiz

Lesson Outline:

Put everything into context. The reason why we are talking about tools to become a good person is because in order to have healthy and successful relationships you first need to be a good person. It is the foundation for good friendships, and families.

The purpose of a religious life is not to avoid evil, but create goodness and joy (positive displacement.) If your life is full of healthy things, there is not room for unhealthy and polluted things.

The goal is to create long lasting happiness, not ‘pig happiness’. How do you tell the difference?  What per cent of selfishness is in your decisions?

Tools for Spiritual life:

In our previous discussions, we have talked about the original ideal, the fall and restoration. I would like to discuss day-to-day spirituality

What does it mean to ‘manage your spiritual life’? The first blessing is to become ‘one with God’.It is a lot like managing anything else. In business, management involves and includes planning, controlling, directing, empowering, innovating, scheduling, monitoring, executing, checking, teaching and reporting to your boss. All these skills are also required to manage your spiritual life.

Analogy: You are an eternal spirit that is temporarily encased in a Physical body, and while you are here, you are responsible to grow the spirit so it is strong enough to stand on it’s own, or if your are really good, you spirit should not just ‘stand’, it should dance and rocket around the universe. How will you do this?  Think of a broken leg, if you stand on it, it will collapse and cause great pain. If you put a cast on it and take care of it, it will heal and strengthen and soon you can graduate and run again. The leg heals itself in the cast, but while you are in your body, you are completely responsible for how your spirit grows and if necessary heals.

Care and feeding of the spirit:

The blood brings nutrition to leg to heal it and you keep it in a warm safe place. You also supply vitality elements to your spirit and bathe it in life elements. Imagine what would happen if you only drank and took drugs and spent your day kicking things with your cast. How well would your leg heal? We often do the same with our spirit. A doctor has a plan for how to care for your leg so it will heal quickly and well, you should have a plan for you spirit so it will grow quickly and well. The doctor knows the leg is well when the bone is fully healed and the leg can support your weight.

How do you know when your spirit is strong? When the seed of goodness in the original mind is developed into a full-grown conscience that doesn’t need anyone watching to know and do the right thing.

 What parts of the spirit need attention and what is the best way to provide them?

 The spirit mind consists of three parts, Heart/Emotion, Intellect and Will.

 The intellect grows through give and take with Truth and is confused by falsehood.

 The heart grows through constructive love, and is injured by fake love.

 The will grows through discipline and practice and shrinks by laziness and being spaced out.

All religions have developed methods and practices that help with the above three points. Some practices work better for one person than others. Part of growing up is finding the best way for you to grow.

Heart/emotion:

*Heart is the ultimate connection to God. This is why religion has focused on it so much. There are many techniques to deepen ones heart, but the biggest obstacle to growth is confusing heart with emotions.  Emotions are superficial, heart is authentic, Heart is subject and emotions are object. Emotions are a quick reaction to events; heart is the filter that decides if they are good or bad. Emotions are the sparks and heart is the fire. While Emotions can be passed from one person to another, Heart is yours alone. Emotions can push you to action; heart welds you to a course of action. Emotions fade and change, heart is constant and solid. Emotions signal something should be done, heart tells you what should be done. Everyone needs emotions, but they are like wild children that must have some order and structure to be good.

Managing emotions: If you think about it, the good thing about emotions is that they can be shared; the bad thing about emotions is that they can be shared. A ‘down’ person can bring you down; an ‘up’ person can bring you up. As you know, departed spirits surrounds you, a little like the Verizon commercial where there are a thousand people following this guy around with his cell-phone. How many of those spirits are feeling ‘up’?

80% of our initial emotions are not our own, they are a reaction from someone near us (in either physical or spiritual worlds’) and we ‘pick up ’ on their attitude. How we respond to that emotion makes all the difference in wasting and hour being angry or depressed or moving on to something constructive.

Managing your emotions has two parts:  Managing your response to an initial emotion.  You do not have to wallow in all the feelings that come your way, at ANY moment you can choose to change the mood.  *List ways to do this*.

1. Create a positive emotional environment. Like a ‘clique’, you choose who your are ‘hanging out with’ emotionally. The more you choose positive, uplifting, loving, inspiring things to do, the more your emotions will ring true to your Heart. . The more cynical, dark and critical, the less connection with your heart. Page 46

2. Intellectual Truth is like penicillin for the emotions, when confronted by a negative emotion, think about it (don’t feel about it.) Truth is: Eternal, not temporary, constructive not destructive, universal not narrow, (The rest of Papa San’s list)

Getting from emotions to HEART:

*Many techniques: 1. Singing - All religions sing or chant. Singing multiplies emotions and deepens them. That is why I-pods can be from the devil, multiplying the wrong feelings works just as powerfully. 2. Meditating - Quietly shutting out superficial things and ‘resonating’ with your original mind and original emotions. Praying - words form your emotions and reflect them back to you. Poetry can do this too. 3. Chanting, a form of meditating, to shut down the ‘noisy’ mind and allow the conscience to speak. Ceremony and sacraments -Consistent rituals that are memorized and allow the mind to ‘float’ towards God.

You will know you have reached your heart when it ‘pings’, like a tuning fork. When something is right, it feels like a gong, not a tinkle bell. The more you can work out of your heart, the less of time and energy you will waste. All your decisions can be ‘heartfelt’ with a little practice.

Truth is like medicine, the more you get, the better you do. What is truth and how is it different form ideas? Everyone has ideas, but they are not all good ones. Truth is: Constructive, instructive, eternal, motivated by love and timely.

Good ideas, like Marxism, are logical and reasonable, but do not fit humans or God. Partial truths are the most destructive.  List a few

Truth is necessary to make plans.

Managing the Truth in your life.

1. Read, listen, and think about truthful things. 2. Place yourself in an environment where Truth is valued. 3. Manage your self-talk. Like emotions, ideas can come from anyone at anytime. 80% of your initial ideas are not yours. You can’t stop and idea form ‘poppoing’ into your head, but you can choose how much give and take you have with it. Self-talk is the conversation you have in your head at any moment, usually it is not ‘in your head’, it is with someone. Choose your self-talk the same way you

join and leave conversations with your friends, changing the subject is the best way to control what you are thinking about. In extreme cases, leave the room and do something else. 4. Discover the ‘Truth: The easiest way is to learn it from someone else. Also utilize reading and listening. Anyone can speak truth, so listen to everyone at least once. Truth that is digested is ‘head knowledge’; ideas that have been thought about, tested and meditated over become ‘heart knowledge’. The heart will ‘gong’ when it connects with TRUTH. The hardest way to learn truth is from experience and then reflection until your heart ‘knows’. It is the most solid Truth. This is how Father discovered the principle.

Constructive ideas: Constructive imagination

Destructive ideas: Destructive fantasies

Will is a measure of the force that Heart and intellect have on behavior. If you know a lot of truth, yet you act like a jerk, you have not developed true freedom. There is no true freedom without results. Unless you reflect true emotion and true knowledge in good actions – not only are you a hypocrite, but your spirit ultimately starves, no good vitality elements are created.

Your physical body is your enemy. Your physical body is reflection of the whole physical creation, getting dominion over it gives you symbolic dominion over the physical universe. Imagine your physical body without your spirit in it. You have a physical mind, instincts and appetites, and primitive reasoning, just like a gorilla or orangutans. Ideally, a dog or gorilla should not control you. How often does your physical body control your behavior?

List ways and times:

What would full spiritual control look like?

Who are people in the world with excellent mind/body unity? (Artists, athletes)

Putting it all together:

1. A balanced spiritual life includes all parts of the previous discussion. Certain personalities respond better to certain types of spiritual practice.

2. Methodists: The founder of Methodism knew his appetites and feelings often got the best of him, so he made a strict schedule of habits and behaviors and forced himself to follow them everyday. Ben Franklin had a lot of methods to control his urges.

3. Catholicism - Uses a priest or spiritual guide to give feedback and 4. Mentoring. We often can fool ourselves, but not and elder or parent. 5. Every person should have three mentors, who are not there parents. They should choose people they can trust for honest feedback and non-emotional honesty.

6. Monasticism - Buddhism and Catholicism use monasteries and retreats and 7. Workshops to create an artificial environment to charge up the battery and provide a concentrated spiritual experience.

8. Good, like-mined friends are critical to growth and development. 9. Learn by doing. You can’t think or feel yourself to heaven. 10. Displacement 11. Conditions 12. Practice 13. Reinforcement 14. Attract UPE 15. If you don’t run your life, someone else will.

Conclude the Presentation with a time for some discussion and feedback/status gathering with the participants.

Spirit World Game

The purpose of the game is to teach the participants the effect that spirit world has on us.

Sometimes we are blind to the types of the spirits that are working on us, what they are trying to get us to do. In order to duplicate this, we choose a participant that is blindfolded and give the task of finding a piece of candy placed somewhere in the room. The candy represents truth. Then 2 individuals are chosen, one to represent spirit world that would guide the blindfolded person towards the truth and one to represent the spirit world that would guide the blindfolded person away from the truth. The person tasked with finding the Truth is guided by both spirits. There is a time restraint. The spirit that prevails gets candy but depending on the outcome, the person tasked with finding the Truth may or may not get candy. This reflects the reality of returning resurrection and the benefit derived by spirit guides, good or evil, through the sharing of vitality elements.

INDEMNITY GAME

This is a game to show the process of Restoration by Indemnity. The participants start off the game with numerous handicaps that should make moving forward difficult – (carrying a jug of water, having one hand tied behind their back, wearing sunglasses, having to move forward by hoping - the number of handicaps should equal the number of stations). There are stations that they progress to and at each station; they have to answer a question correctly. The questions can be based on material given in the earlier presentation. If their answer is right, they get to “drop” one of their handicaps and move forward. If not, they have to go back to the prior station and pick up the “lost” handicap. The goal is to get to the last station, loose their last handicap and gain a prize (candy bar and a ribbon or star).

The progress of the game should require that each person advancing has a 5 minute lead time ahead of the following person. There will need to be some participants manning the stations. This can be switched after the first group has finished.

Appendix C Relationship Game

This is a “catch” game. The thing to be tossed is a balloon. There are 3 rounds

 In the first round the participants attempt to keep the balloon in the air by passing it back and forth.  In the second round the participants try to “spike” the balloon in the opponents territory, attempting to score points.  In the third round not only try to keep the ball back and forth, but they get extra points for really creative passes (trick shots) or extreme grace and beauty.  In the fourth round you teach people to do number three (coach them on how to pass the balloon in creative ways.)

The first round represents a relationship where people are helping one another. It is much easier to keep a relationship going if you aren’t trying to ruin it for the other person. The second round exemplifies a relationship where people are attempting to beat one another, it is a little exciting but it is also nearly impossible. In the third round they attempt to assist one another, and the joy comes from finding interesting ways in which to keep their relationship going. (i.e.: Going out the movies, doing exciting things, etc.) In the fourth and final round they teach the other participants how to do one special trick or beauty shot that they learned.

Teachers Manual – High School – Unit 2 – The Fall

The Theme of this particular unit is “The Fall of Man” and the scope is to study this topic from both a traditional approach and also a “real-life” and relevant approach. But first, I would like to have you reflect on the reason for studying this topic at this particular time in our unit on Blessing Preparation.

Certainly you are aware of the importance True Parents and our Church places on chastity. This is especially true for all members of the blessed children, so much so that committing the act of the fall results in the loss of blessed children stature. But also, our True Father has clearly illuminated that this is the ideal standard of moral and ethical behavior through setting clear requirements of purity for blessed children to attend a matching given by the True Parents. It had to be done so there could be no confusion regarding the importance and requirement of chastity and purity in both heart and substance. In light of this requirement, the study of the fall is absolutely relevant in a course to help our blessed children prepare for the Blessing.

I would, however, also suggest that there are additional reasons to take up this topic at this time in our study. One key reason would be to introduce the concept of the Fall from the perspective of lineage and to let our blessed children understand the significance of their lives in relationship in the flow of history towards Heaven and away from Hell. The key ideas here are that the fall caused the introduction of impurity into human and family life, so much so that the current culture is in so many ways an extension of the root and an expression of the degradation of the ideal on a worldwide level. In stark contrast to this, the difficult course of restoration has essentially been the clawing of humanity out of the hole called Hell and the cleansing each person’s lineage by excruciatingly painful steps until the possibility of the Blessing was reached. But the Blessing, though a crucial transition point to be sure, did not automatically result in the completion of the process. It is important for blessed children to not lose any of the hard won ground, but instead to contribute towards keeping the momentum towards true purity going forward.

An additional insight that needs to be conveyed is that a human being is created to be governed by laws of morality and ethics and therefore no one can fulfill themselves or their purpose if they ignore or break these laws. And the central point of all moral and ethical morays is the need for purity before marriage and fidelity within a marriage. The Central Point! To best frame the issues involved, I would like to look at the following quote from True Father. I know this is quite long, but it is said so well. This is from the Keynote speech from the 47th Children’s Day Celebration, 11/21/2006:

Ladies and gentlemen, it was necessary for Adam and Eve to establish a model, peaceful, ideal family. God, the Absolute Being, created human beings as His children in order to instill in them absolute values on the basis of an absolute

standard. Thus, human beings must follow the way of that absolute standard in keeping with the demands of the heavenly path. This means we must follow our destined life course in order to attend God, the Absolute Being, as our Parent. In other words, for people to perfect themselves in resemblance of God and obtain the stature of people of character who can be called sons and daughters of the absolute Being, they must follow the path based on the absolute standard determined by Heaven. The essence of this path is the standard of absolute sexual morality.

The first stage is maintaining absolute sexual morality-in other words a standard of absolute sexual purity-prior to getting married. After we are born, we go through a process of growth. We pass through infancy and childhood in a very safe and secure environment under our parents’ love and protection. We then enter the time of adolescence, which signals the start of a new and dynamic life as we forge relationships on a totally new level with those around us, as well as with all things of creation. This is the moment when we begin to travel the path to becoming an absolute human being-internally, through the perfection of our character, and externally, by reaching adulthood. Yet, at this time there is an absolute prerequisite that human beings must uphold no matter who they are; that is maintaining their purity. Sexuality purity is based on an absolute model of sexual morality for human beings. God gave it to His children as their destined responsibility and duty, to be carried out in order to fulfill the ideal of creation. This heavenly path is thus the way to perfecting an absolute model of sexual morality. What was the single word, the one and only commandment God gave to Adam and Eve, the first human ancestors, upon their creation? It was the commandment and blessing to maintain an absolute standard of sexual abstinence until Heaven’s approval of their marriage. We find this in the Bible passage that indicates that Adam and Eve would surely die on the day they ate of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. If they had refrained from eating and observed Heaven’s commandment, they would have perfected their character and, as co-creators, stood with God, the Creator, as His equals. Furthermore, they would have taken dominion over the creation and become the lords of the universe enjoying eternal and ideal happiness. It was God’s blessing that He told them to preserve their purity so that they could be married with His ‘Blessing as His true children, become true husband and wife, produce true children and become true parents. This deepens our understanding of this commandment; it was not something separate from absolute sexual morality, which is a principle of God’s creation. The profound truth that lay hidden within God’s commandment throughout history was this: human beings must inherit and live by a model of sexual morality that is intrinsic to God’s ideal for creation in order to perfect their individuality as God’s Children, and establish themselves as lords of creation…Therefore, if, upholding absolute sexual morality, Adam and Eve had achieved individual perfection-the perfection of their character-in accordance with God’s will, and entered into conjugal relations through His Blessing, they would have attained complete oneness with Him. God would have

dwelt within their union. Also, their children would have been linked to this holy order of love, enjoying a direct relationship with God as their Parent. In other words, the marriage of the perfected Adam and Eve, based on their absolute sexual morality would have been God’s own marriage. While God is forever God, also Adam and Eve would have become the embodiment of God. They would have become God’s body. God would have settled inside their minds and hearts to become the True Parent of humankind in both the spiritual and physical world, on the foundation of absolute sexual morality.

So from these three angles, it would appear that the study of the topic of the Fall and Sin is indeed pivotal to our being able to fulfill the Three Blessings and accomplish a Godly world. Still, such an overview must be understood to be just that – an overview and an opportunity to grasp God’s perspective and strategy on the matter. But to be effective in implementing that strategy, a specific set of tactics that can carry our Blessed children through all of the real world snares and pitfalls is needed. We intend to give an advanced study on the topic of the fall – both as a lesson into what happens when those laws are not observed and to give our Blessed children tools to help them avoid being derailed because of misuses or mistakes in this area.

Danger Signs and How to Protect Ourselves:

A good place to start is with the two components needed to avoid doing evil – Truth and Faith in that Truth, or Truth + Faith = Ability to overcome the temptation and avoid the Fall (from the Divine Principle, Section 3.2).

Why did God nurture the faith of Adam and Eve by giving them the commandment“Do not eat of the fruit”? In their immature state, Adam and Eve could not be directly governed by God through love. Because the power of love is stronger than the power of the Principle, God foresaw that if they ever formed a common base with the Archangel, there was a possibility that they could succumb to the power of deviant, unprincipled love and fall. To prevent this, God gave Adam and Eve the commandment that forbade them from relating with the Archangel in this way. No matter how powerful the unprincipled love of the Archangel might be, had Adam and Eve adhered to God’s commandment, forming a common base with God and engaging in give and take with Him and no other, the power of the Archangel’s unprincipled love would not have affected them and they would never have fallen.

What truth needs to be understood related to this topic? The first aspect of truth that needs to be grasped is an understanding of the facts and details, process and results of the Fall. You need to know the enemy and their arena of strength and power in order to recognize patterns and behaviors that are rooted in the realm of the Fall and thus to protect yourself from foolishly repeating or falling prey to those same behaviors. Another way to see it is that we need to understand the language of the enemy so we can figure

out what they are doing, kind of like breaking the code so that we are aware of their strategy and tactics. If we plan to do battle with the Devil, we had better have a complete arsenal of weapons – to think otherwise is foolhardy, dangerous and naive. The second aspect of the truth that needs to be studied is to research the principles and behaviors that have proven to be successful in overcoming the realm of the Fall or the aspect of the Principle that deals with restoration and progress towards the ideal. It is far better to inherit this wisdom than to have each person re-invent the wheel and probably make unnecessary mistakes in the process.

It is from this perspective let’s do a quick reviewing the basic details of the Fall discovered by True Father and documented in the Divine Principle.

1. Introduction: Overview of the Fall 2. Origin of Sin, including identity of a. Tree of Life and Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil b. Serpent c. Sin of the Angel and Sin of the First Man and Woman d. Fruit of the Knowledge of G/E and the Root of Sin 3. Motive and Process of the Fall a. Creation of Angels b. Spiritual and physical Fall c. Force of Love and the Force of the Principle d. The Purpose of the Commandment and the Process of Growth 4. Results of the Fall a. Interaction of Satan (and Evil Spirit World) and Fallen Man b. The nature of Good and Evil c. Sin and Types of Sin d. Fallen Nature and the 4 dimensions of Fallen Nature

In particular, truth that needs to be understood includes an in-depth knowledge of the actual components and process of the fall so that we do not venture into Satan’s arena of power and dominion. Also, if we plan to do battle with the Devil, we had better have a complete arsenal of weapons – to think otherwise is foolhardy and naive. One possible way to approach this is to try to identify key concepts or Truths, that can become the building block to building a strategy to protect ourselves from the Fall. Possibilities are:

1. The Fall was sexual 2. The process of the fall was initiated by a spirit being (Satan) and involves two steps 3. The existence of sin is a state acquired after the original creation and is not humanity’s original state 4. In addition to our original nature, fallen humanity also possess a fallen nature 5. The Fall is inherited through the lineage – Reversal from this is known as re-birth / The first generation Blessing. 6. The state of humanity after the Fall is continued through both spiritual and physical influences

7. The Process of the Fall 8. The types of Sin 9. The results of the Fall – the Fallen realm

If you understand the components of the Fall, which is the arena of Satan’s Power Base, you might be able to identify the process when it appears in your life. For example, like in the movie - “The Matrix”, where the gatekeepers became Mr. Smith when someone from the rebellion attempted to breach or leave the Matrix, when you put yourself into a situation – no matter how innocent it may at first appear, where you begin an exclusive relationship with someone of the opposite sex. When you put yourself into that type of dynamic, you can be sure that the boy you are relating to will begin to act like the Archangel, or the girl like a fallen Eve – this is because they have a base with their fallen lineage and pull that type of spirit world to themselves. This is all the worse because they have no reason to resist that type of influence. And it is extremely powerful. This is the reason why we don’t date or put ourselves into a situation where we place the person of the opposite sex into a horizontal relationship with us. This is the reason why the Commandment say that we shouldn’t “eat of the fruit, not even touch it”. But this goes against all the values that are prevalent in our society. When you reach adolescence, you face a barrage of encouragement to look attractive, fit in by being popular, etc. It is the norm to seek for the second blessing from a horizontal position – after all, who was it that began this pattern or found his spouse – Lucifer, of course.

The correct way is to deal with the wounded self; this process is the Restoration through Indemnity. To indemnify means to undo the results of an action, to bring something back to its starting point. The wound was caused by an action; to heal the wound an action must be done that undoes the damage from the original action. The healing happens instantaneously. Then we are in a natural, healed state. The key point is to approach this in a proactive manner, instead of a reactive one.

One additional key idea that should be grasped is that the fall caused the introduction of impurity into human and family life, so much so that the current culture is in so many ways an extension of the root and an expression of the degradation of the ideal on a worldwide level. In stark contrast to this, the difficult course of restoration has essentially been the clawing of humanity out of the hole called Hell and the cleansing each person’s lineage by excruciatingly painful steps until the possibility of the Blessing was reached. But the Blessing, though a crucial transition point to be sure, did not automatically result in the completion of the process. It is important for Blessed childrens to not loose any of the hard won ground, but instead to contribute towards keeping the momentum towards true purity going forward. It is also crucial that Blessed children not throw the whole foundation away and end up back in the realm of the Fallen world – both for themselves and for God.

The second part of the formula for protection is that we must bring in the element of faith. For even if you’ve heard all your life about what you should and shouldn’t do,

emotions and the force of love is stronger than that knowledge or the Truth. Does it matter to you; do you have faith in those words and more importantly a connection to the author of those words? If you don’t, at crucial times you won’t have a true compass to guide you. You also won’t have the proper protection and weapons to survive an attack. The Chasm between knowing what is right and doing what is right can only be transverse by knowing the guideline, believing in the guidelines and following them. Understand and have faith that the values advocated by a vertical culture are in your best interest. Also, understand and have faith that you really to want to fulfill the 3 Blessings and to do so, you must keep purity and fidelity.

In particular, when we reach physical adulthood, we are constantly being told that we must take responsibility for our lives and our faith. It is, however, a perilous precipice to stand on, especially if we are full of emotion without the counterbalancing wisdom and arsenal of good conditions – who are we listen to? The other protection, besides avoiding a dangerous situation, is to not follow the pattern of arrogant attachment to “your own ideas” by constantly checking in with God and getting His perspective on the choices being offered. The problem with Adam and Eve was, in their time of confusion, they totally cut themselves off from God – they needed to ask God, ask God, ask God. When you enter into a dangerous situation it will be an extremely gray and confusing environment – Do not cut yourself off from the vertical elements in your life. If YOU ask, God will answer. If you connect to God, and can feel His perspective on this topic, you would never want to cause Him pain. There is so much more going on here than just getting in touch with your individuality. You have been born in the midst of a battlefield and if you think that you are exempt from the war that is raging, you are sorely mistaken and run the risk of being a casualty. You may not see yourself as a target, but make no mistake, to Satan and all evil spirit world, you stand out like a laser beam. Though you did not ask for this position, it is your inheritance. And sticking your head in the sand and pretending that this is not your spiritual reality is not going to alter that reality. You are spiritual royalty, it is your spiritual birthright and it is about time you became aware of this fact. However, this inheritance can be thrown away if you do not protect it and your purity- if you are not part of the solution, you will become part of the problem. The quicker you get it, the quicker you can defend yourself and thus really be able to fulfill your potential – a desire that comes straight from your original mind.

Understand and Have faith that self-benefit/selfishness/self-service and love are on opposite sides of the spectrum. A Blessing (and marriage for that matter) is never going to work if it is not based on cherishing the other instead of serving yourself and your needs.

Course Objectives:

1. Build on vision developed in Chapter 1. 2. Understand the course and motivation of the fall, not just the biblical part. 3. Apply lessons of the fall to one’s own life. 4. Feel and understand the danger of a blessed children fall to the lineage, destiny and spiritual life.

5. Identify personal ‘looking for love’ moments 6. Danger Signs and Protecting Yourself

Ideal of Happiness

We are meant to live in a world of joy. We go through the four realms of heart, finding happiness as a child, brother/sister, spouse, and parent. In such a world we would receive the love we need from childhood and into the afterlife. We would naturally fulfill both our needs and desires – which is a natural part of our human existence. As a child, this process is usually contained with the dynamic relationship found in the family. As we reach adolescence, this process would expand to include a multitude of exciting experiences in a larger social and natural world context that would teach us and inspire us (based on reflection) and lead us to complete our original self.

As part of the growing period/realm of indirect dominion, we grow naturally into a zone of free will where God does not directly guide us – called adolescence. He designed us to be guided by our original nature/conscience and his words. An original child was meant to reflect to on their experiences in the context of their original nature and God’s word and by their free will become their ideal self and fully resonate and realize God’s presence in their being.

Originally the sum of your choices would let you create yourself and become a brilliant person (though you might for a while be stuck in the stage of being a mediocre person or very underdeveloped). Your greatest happiness comes from completely developing and manifesting your unique potential as a person of God (the first Blessing). Each person has a general set of skills from being human but also has a unique set of gifts that they will discover and develop. The passion of the Principle is in this process of “creating” yourself.

Process of the Fall

The original process described above would not have included anything, or a realm, apart from the Principle or growth to the ideal. In the original process, when a person fails to use their free-will constructively and positively to manifest their God given potential, they naturally limit their experiences and choices. The process of the Fall was a whole different scenario. This set up a crisis situation – the entry into the picture of a potentially deadly force. However, the way to counter and protect themselves from this attack was also available to Adam and Eve. What we need to study is what should have happened and also how the process went terribly wrong, based on the choices that Adam and Eve made. We study this to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and also to choose to make the right choices in our lives. We also study this to know how the enemy works and to avoid being victims of his craft.

The original Adam and Eve didn’t choose to pay attention to God’s Word and ideal. Other things became more important such as their immediate feelings and appetites. When the

force of love came into the picture, they didn’t have the relationship with God and therefore they did not truly know who they were destined to be. They followed their feelings and responded to the temptation that resulted in their fall. They made the choice to not follow God’s way or correctly fulfill their portion of responsibility.

What Happens Today?

Today, we live in a world where at birth we do not receive true love from our parents, we do not receive fulfilling love from our siblings or spouse, and we do not give true love to our children. This leaves us unsatisfied and unfulfilled because our most basic spiritual needs have not been met.

Part of the process of the fall is a story of wrong choices (trying to satisfy spiritual hunger or a need for love), that may end up with a single monumental decision, but is preceded by a confluence of small choices that drives us in one direction or another.

The purpose of free will and Co-Creatorship is that it allows us to make the choices that create happiness. The difference between long-term, complete happiness and the short- term, self-destructive happiness is the direction and motivation of the choice.

I’ll call this the Journey from Pure to Fallen. The most basic need of a person is to love and be loved. That is to say, they must feel loved (respected, understood, appreciated, etc) from others. When they cannot feel love, there is a chasm, an empty space that must be filled. At some point in our lives, when we recognize this chasm, we strive to fill it. How we respond dictates whether we are starting the journey of the fall or the journey of restoration. It is very easy to start “Looking for love in all the wrong places, looking for love in too many faces. Searching their eyes, looking for traces of what I’m dreaming of” as described in the song by Johnny Lee. Also, usually the ploy starts off far away from the fall – ie: Why can’t I just have a friend who is a boy or girl, I can handle it (totally underestimating the power of fallen love), before you know it, like Duck Soup, your cooked.

The journey of the fall happens when we blindly attempt to fill this void, we grab out for anything that brings us joy. Physical gratification is by far the easiest way to feel happy, so this is the usually the course the fall takes. The key to remember is that when we are lonely enough we will do anything to make that feeling go away. To use another term, this is how you get your foot in the door. Once you have begun a relationship, then give and take can kick in. Give and take action creates and empowers the cycle that will pull you one way or another. You fill this void with the wrong things. We do this because we want to fill this void, and we will do anything in order to fill this. The problem is that by jumping blindly we pick things that are unhealthy and can cause serious problems in the long run. We seek physical gratification because it is easier to feel.

There are two ways we deal with the void; run away or resolve it. This void is a rift between what we need and what we have, it can be a violation or a starvation. Either way, it makes us feel uncomfortable, and this discomfort moves us into action. The easiest

thing to do is run away, because this takes the least amount of effort. By running away we mean that we mask the void, we mask it behind actions such as drugs, alcohol, masturbation, pornography, and sex. These actions aggravate the rift, as this rift grows the actions that need to be done to cover the rift grow in size. In this way people move from soft to hard drugs.

At some point we hit a point of no return, where the actions we have done weigh so heavily that it is almost impossible to change. That is, we have formed habits and dependencies that are very difficult to throw off. We call this point of no return “The Fall.”

Finally we justify the actions we have done. We ‘dig ourselves deeper’ because it is easier to keep running from our demons then to face them. We make ourselves feel better by justifying what we have done, and multiplying our actions towards others. We end up following our moods and feelings instead of our conscience, this drives us away from the truth because we are comfortable with where we are.

We separate ourselves from those that make us confront our bad choices, that is that we no longer feel comfortable around them. The Fear of non-acceptance and misunderstanding also comes into play. We fear that they will not love us, so we leave to a place where this fear cannot reach us, we run away.

Another component that comes into play is the sense of ownership for any of your actions – but the problem with this is when the ownership feeling is done prior to our having fulfilled our portion of responsibility. Still, we want to believe in ourselves and get quite attached to decisions and actions that “we do”.

Satan uses this principled progression of seeking love and twisted it to subjugate the world. It is like making fire. Fuel and air by themselves is not enough, there must be a spark. The environment of freedom is necessary, give and take with thoughts creates an environment where a flame can take place and lastly an igniter comes along in the form of our response to a temptation (and believes me, the temptation will always come when the other two elements are present).

Appendix E Sex and the Fall of Man

A lot of people wonder why the fall of man was sexual. While I do not have an answer from the Divine Principle, I do have an opinion formed from prayer, meditation, and thought.

Sex serves three primary roles:  Procreate  Totally selfless love  Merging two into one

This is the most obvious and least applicable reason for sex. Sex is the act that allows us to have offspring. This in and of itself does not cause the fall, but is the root of lineage that allows the fall to propagate. We learn a lot of who we are from our parents, our Primary Group; we learn how to act towards others and how to view ourselves. It’s as simple as that.

Totally selfless love:

The second most important reason is because sex is the absolute manifestation of selfless love. Sex, or better yet ‘Making Love’, is a totally selfless act. It is when one partner gives everything for the pleasure of the other partner, when they have sex in order to bring their partner the greatest pleasure possible. Fallen sex is the opposite, when a person enters into a sexual relationship in order for themselves to feel good.

In this way it is a perversion of a beautiful thing into something disgusting. There is no truer example of fallen culture then fallen sex. It is the epitome of selfishness, to use of another person’s most sacred part for your own personal pleasure with no regards to their needs or feelings.

The fall of man was not just a sexual act, but rather a paradigm shift. An about face (180 degree move) from a selfless culture to a selfish culture, and sex was the culmination of this shifted mindset.

Love is given to those who give it first, a reciprocal relationship. This is why in the ‘ideal world’ living for the sake of others gives us the greatest joy, by serving other people we receive the love and admiration of those we serve. They give us what we need to fulfill our spiritual needs; they give us value, respect, understanding, and love.

A fallen culture robs of us of these things. By only living for ourselves we reap the things that are opposite to our needs. People come to fear and hate us, they dislike us because we do not care for them. We manipulate and use another in order to feel good, this leads

others to feel misused and unvalued, and while they fulfill our needs for a short time, in the long run we become unsatisfied and lonely because they cannot love us back because of how we treated them.

There is no greater example of this short term gain by abuse and manipulation then fallen sex. It is the thesis of a fallen culture, and the culmination of a life lived with a ‘me first’ mentality.

Merging two into one:

The most important reason as to why the fall of man involves sex is because sex is the mechanical way in which two beings become one.

In a purely physical sense the act of sex is the merging of two bodies. Physically speaking two become one. This external relationship is a reflection of the internal goings on of sex, metaphysically sex is the way in which two souls become one.

When someone has sex they imbue a part of who they are into the other person. In the climax of a sexual relationship it is as if two essences for a small fragment of time merge, and then separate. This coupling leaves a residue, so that part of each person sticks to the other and from that point on that piece of the person’s essence is part of the other. That is to say a piece of your heart belongs to the person you just had sex with, and that piece will always belong to them.

This is why a first love is so powerful, and why people never forget their first time. The act of intimacy is the way in which we give a piece of ourselves to another. From that point forward that intimate action defines a part of who we are, and changes us in some way (becomes a memory that affects our actions in the future.)

This is also why love can be such a dangerous and painful thing. When we give a piece of ourselves to another, and they trash it, it hurts. We close ourselves off to the pain, but it leaves us feeling unwanted and unvalued. In sense we could say it leaves as scar. The more this is done, the more damaged we become, and the more pain and scars we carry around.

When we enter into relationships with these scars, we bring these burdens into these relationships. We cause pain to our partners, and pain to ourselves because we cannot trust our partners to not hurt us like our previous partners had.

More importantly, those pieces we gave to those other partners we can no longer give to our current partner. That is to say, if we have been intimate before marriage, we can not give our spouse the pleasure of being our first love. That piece of us has already been given to another, and we will never get it back; and since we do not have it we will never be able to give that part of ourselves to our spouse.

This keeps us from being able to give everything to our spouse, and keeps us from being able to become one. There will always be scars from our past that will get in the way, even after forgiveness, things that will forever mar the potential for a most beautiful relationship.

In conclusion this is why the fall of man was manifested in sex.

Sex is the vehicle for procreation, and the way in which a fallen culture spreads itself out and propagates.

Unprincipled sex is the perversion of a selfless act into a selfish act, and is a complete reflection of a cultural shift from a selfless mindset to a selfish mindset.

Sex is the way in which we become one with our spouses so that we can come to truly reflect God (since God is both male and female.) The abuse of this hinders our ability to do this, and blocks us from becoming like God. This in turn blocks us from being able to find true happiness.

BLESSING = FULFILLING GODS PURPOSE OF CREATION AND RESTORATION

To preface this presentation I would like to quote from Introduction to Restoration from Part II of the “Exposition of the Divine Principle:

The providence of restoration refers to God’s work to restore human beings to our original, unfallen state so that we may fulfill the purpose of creation. As discussed in Part I, human beings fell from the top of the growth stage and have been held under Satan’s dominion ever since. To restore human beings, God works to cut off Satan’s influence. Yet, as was explained in Christology, we must have the original sin removed before we can sever Satan’s bonds and be restored to the state before the Fall. This is possible only when we are born anew through the Messiah, the True Parents. To explain further: we first need to go through a course to separate Satan from ourselves. We do this in order to restore ourselves in form to the spiritual level which Adam and Eve had reached before the Fall-the top of the growth stage. On this foundation, we are to receive the Messiah and be reborn, and thereby be fully restored to the original state of human beings before the Fall. Finally, by following the Messiah, we should continue our growth to maturity where we can fulfill the purpose of creation.

I would posit that the words “in form” are very crucial to understand the meaning of the following sentence - “we do this in order to restore ourselves in form to the spiritual level which Adam and Eve had reached before the Fall”. “In Form” is appropriate because in this case, the spiritual level accomplished is on an external or symbolic level, with the accompanying internal standard absolutely not in sync. I would also posit that the words “and thereby be fully restored” in the sentence “we are to receive the Messiah and be reborn, and thereby be fully restored to the original state of human beings before the Fall” is referring to gaining the substance counterpart to the “In Form” restoration of having no connection to Satan or sin which Adam and Eve had at the top of the growth stage prior to falling. I would also posit that this is not describing an immediate accomplishment.

In fact, from the onset of the process to the total accomplishment of being cleansed from all aspects of sin, in most cases, involves a very long time. This is because, though the Messiah can cut the root of sin or the original sin through the rebirth ceremony known as The Blessing, He does not clean up the remaining Collective, Hereditary and Personal Sins. The responsibility for those sins lies squarely in the hands of those who committed them. This is not to say that tremendous merit of the age is not imparted to humanity through the restoration course pioneered both by the Messiah and all victorious Central Blessed Families. But these victories can, perhaps, be likened to the creation of a supportive environment and spiritual momentum for spiritual cleansing and growth. The fact remains, however, that such an environment does not negate an individual’s responsibility to inherit and embody the opportunity conveyed by the “cleansed” spiritual

environment. This is opposed to the cleansing of the sin of Adam and Eve that can only be accomplished by another Adam and Eve or the Messiah and His Bride. And it is not until the last remnant of the fall, evil or sin is eradicated in an individual that he or she can then be free to grow in the way God intended Adam and Eve to grow and to fulfill their purpose of creation. In fact, after rebirth, the remaining stage of the growing period, namely, the completion stage should more accurately be described as a spectrum, timeline and process through which these re-born individuals move on the way towards fulfilling their purpose of creation. Thus, the predominant experience of those individuals who pass through the process and ceremony of rebirth is that of restoration in the midst of a process of the fulfillment of the ideal. Consider the following quote from Part II of the Divine Principle, Section 1.2.2:

After receiving the Messiah and being restored to the position of the first human ancestors before their Fall, a path still remains to be trod: We must become one with the Messiah centered on the Heart of God, then follow him along the unchartered path to the summit of the growing period, and thus finally become perfect incarnations.

Not only that, but I would also posit that it is also only gradually and probably after a long period of time that succeeding generations issuing from these reborn individuals and also the greater society will become cleansed and separated from any remnant or influence of sin and evil. The process I am describing is a gradual movement of humanity towards the state where finally each child that is born will simply need to grow through the 3 stages of growth and the Indirect Dominion and finally accomplish the 3 Blessings or God’s Purpose of Creation. It is not that I am implying that this original course is easy. Not at all! I might liken it to the task of climbing Mt. Everest – a daunting one indeed. I would like to explain, though, that accomplishing the Purpose of Creation coupled with having to deal with the remnants of sin, fallen nature and evil is just so much more difficult – perhaps similar to an individual attempting to climb Mt. Everest while carrying a 500 lb gorilla who doesn’t really want to accompany he or she but is somehow stuck to them and in addition, this creature is constantly beating upon this individual and the gorilla must absolutely be shed before the summit can be reached! Why does the Divine Principle barely explains the course of and following rebirth? I believe that this is due to the fact that the Divine Principle’s purpose is to bring humanity into the full recognition of and then faith in the Messiah – Our True Parents. The course after that point of faith is to be explained and understood through the guidance of the True Parents. Certainly this course cannot be gleaned from the course Jesus walked since he could not bring both physical & spiritual salvation to humanity. In reality, the providence and understanding the 2nd Coming brings and unfolds leads us to a whole new world and course, one that, heretofore, has not been trod and really, can’t be easily fathomed by individuals in a fallen world apart from that guidance.

I would like to introduce a visual image of the course that begins after a lineage is freed from original sin. As the Divine Principle explains, the Blessing that gives Rebirth takes place at the top of the growth stage. In a sense, the Blessing allows us passage into a realm that Dr. Lee (from the book True Family Values - co-written by Pak and Wilson)

refers to as the Principled Realm. This would be opposed to the realm that the newly blessed couple has just left called the Unprincipled Realm. The use of those 2 terms underscores the point that the Unprincipled Realm occurred based on human behavior that was never planned for in God’s original Purpose of Creation – or outside the original plan of God as expressed through the Divine Principle. A Blessed couple s entry into the Principled Realm can be liken to their giving up their citizenship in the Unprincipled Realm because they have be cleansed of the original based that initiated that Realm. However, even though they enter that new realm at the top of the growth stage, they may individually, in fact, be of a lesser level of spiritual growth. Probably, couples, or those individuals who comprise that couple, who transition into that Principled Realm could be at either the form, growth or completion stages of spiritual growth. Then, of course, each child born into this realm needs to grow through the 3 stages of growth. Then there is also the problem of the residue of sin (ancestral, personal and collective), which must be shed. And there is also the reality that it may take many generations for each individual born to be able to accomplish the ideal standard of reaching perfection by the age of 21. All these points contribute to the idea I introduced of Restoration after the original Blessings as consisting of a spectrum.

Based on the prior paragraph, I would like to go into more depth of the topic of “Blessing is fulfilling the Purpose of Creation and also Restoration”. I have made it clear that all marriages are bound to have trouble. Then what is the quintessential uniqueness of a Blessed Marriage? At its core, the essence of a Blessed Marriage is that it comes on the foundation of the dissolution and elimination of the original sin. The importance of this cannot be undervalued or underestimated. Perhaps it is helpful to understand this great gift from the perspective of the removal of sin. Since the original sin was the initial point through which sin was introduced into humanity’s existence and sin is “a violation of heavenly law which is committed when a person forms a common base with Satan, thus setting a condition for give and take action with him” (from Chapter 2, section 4.5, page 72) then it would follow that all sin must be eliminated in order for any person to completely move away from the realm of the fall. Yet, this one sin (original sin) can never be eliminated by the efforts of humanity, no matter how extreme. Only the one who committed the original sin can eliminate it. This means that only a returning Adam or the Messiah can remove the original sin. So no matter how much progress a non- blessed individual may make to remove personal, hereditary and collective sin, they are prevented from completing the process; they are tethered to the realm of the fall, until their base of original sin is removed. That being the case, then the likelihood of repeating personal sin in the person’s life and lineage is very high.

Can you recognize the value of the Blessing now? Since the First Generation Blessing = Removal of Original Sin, a state that is then passed onto each succeeding generation that keeps the required standard of purity by also receiving the Blessing and not repeating the fall, then a Blessed individual’s life and their Blessed Marriage hold the potential for the real progressive advancement and dramatic realization of “God’s work to restore human beings to our original, un-fallen state so that we may fulfill the purpose of creation”(from Introduction to Restoration, page 176). I would even declare that the absolute purpose of the Blessing in this time of restoration is to create marriages that will focus on the

business of accomplishing and completing the Process of Restoration, fulfilling the 3 Blessings and accomplishing the Kingdom of God. Perhaps it will be clearer to say that Blessing holds out the possibility of effective, un-tethered and complete Restoration and Advancement towards becoming the Ideal Couple and Family. In other words, your efforts and investment in the growth and perfection of your relationship, your love, your couple and family absolutely matter and can be effective. Of course, as in any endeavor involving human responsibility and effort, a couple’s/family’s effectiveness in relationship to this goal will be determined by that couple’s/family’s investment of heart, effort and wisdom. Please understand that you will reap what you sow and also consider the agony present in the heart of God. Then welcome and work with gusto, unflagging energy and zeal towards accomplishing the Will of the Father. The amazing thing is that the fruit of such effort can be very great and can result in absolute progress towards the accomplished of that goal and the hope of Heaven.

From another perspective, I believe that since a Blessed marriage holds such hope for God and humanity, it becomes the focus of extensive and concentrated spiritual attention, both good and bad. This would include attention from ancestors that need to be liberated and restored to evil spirit world that would like to destroy God’s work, especially work with the potential to destroy the presence of evil in this world. From this perspective, a Blessed Marriage is apt to contain even more trouble than a non-blessed marriage. Life in a Blessed Marriage is sometimes like living in a pressure cooker and can at times be a life of concentrated trouble with the participants under great spiritual pressure. But please take heart, the rewards will ultimately be sweet and worth every minute of your suffering. Also, these Blessed Marriages have the greatest potential to comfort the Heart of God and to hasten the restoration of humanity by creating great merit for the age. I would like to suggest 3 purposes for a Blessed Marriage. 1. The expansion of the true lineage. The goal is actually to cause a complete immigration from the Unprincipled Realm/lineage to the Principled Realm/lineage so that the unprincipled realm/lineage is emptied out and left to atrophy and finally disappear (actually for those realms to be purified and come under the sovereignty of God). 2. To establish the merit of the age to benefit and help all humanity more easily enter into the Principled Realm. 3. To truly accomplish God’s Purpose of Creation, becoming perfect individuals, couples and families and expanding that to both absolutely establish the Kingdom of God on the earth and in the Spirit world and to be qualified to enter into those realms.

I would like to refer to a quote from St. Paul from the book of I Corinthians, Chapter 7, starting with verse 8: - “Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that”. The clear message that you must face squarely is that you will have trouble in your Blessing, in fact all marriages will have trouble. There are a few key reasons why this is so. One of them is due to the existence of sin and fallen nature. I was quite impressed by True Father’s clear explanation of the essence of sin, from the following speech – “ True Parents Day from the Historical Point of View” given in New York, 4/18/1977:

What kind of disease have you caught? The diagnosis is that fallen man has the disease of fallen love. It is the disease of love centered on Satan and controlled by

Satan, and through it men and women have become prisoners of Satan by inheriting his lineage. All people are born as direct heirs of Satan. How did this disease of love start? The fall was initiated when one person claimed self- centered love. That person denied the value of all other relationships in his desire to make himself the center of the Universe. He sought to bring benefit only to himself, and when his desire entered the realm of love, the disease was begun. We must find a cure for this love disease. What medicine should be prescribed? Because self-centered love brought the fall, we must find a God-centered or unselfish love in order to be cured or restored…

Is this true for those who are dwelling in the realm of sin without the benefit of the removal of original sin, those whose marriage involves the removal of Original Sin and those who are Blessed on the foundation of such couples of rebirth? The answer is yes and lies in the understanding that until all remnants of sin and fallen nature in the descendants of fallen Adam and Eve – at least personal and hereditary sin are eliminated we will not be free of its influence. That is, until collective, cultural and social expressions of sin and fallen nature on all levels and reaching to the very beginnings of humanities life on this globe, from the individual, family, tribe, society, nation, world to the cosmos are removed, the process of Restoration will not be finished nor can the Kingdom of Heaven be established. Also, just as an aside, the cleansing of sin occurs on 2 dimensions. The first is the resolving of the heartistic impact/remembrance of the sin that is held in the relationship between the sinner and those sinned against. This resolution takes place through the sacrament of forgiveness on the part of the one who was impacted by the sinner (was sinned against or whose heart and trust was betrayed). The second is in the replacing of the elements/impact/results of sin in the sinner’s spirit self, character, mind and heart. In other words, the evil elements must be replaced with the positive, good elements based on correct, good actions, emotions, willfulness and heart. Let me say this again, until all remnants of sin is ultimately, completely and irrevocably eliminated, the process of fulfilling the Purpose of Creation cannot be totally and finally accomplished. Take a minute and jot down all the elements of sin, fallen nature, wrong action, selfish and self-firstness that might possible be targets of restoration in your individual, hereditary and collective lives? Now, consider those problems within your couple - either current or yet to be. I suspect that the list, if honestly transcribed and recorded, will be quite complex and extensive.

Since the fight against sin and process for the elimination of sin is brought right smack dab into the center of any marriage, do you think there will be difficulty and trouble? Absolutely! There will be trouble within the man and within the woman and also, trouble between the couple. This trouble will take many forms. It can be reflective of past trouble between similar couples that weren’t restored, it can be the inability of men and women to get beyond their individual perspective (self-firstness) to honor and understand their spouse. This goes way beyond the inherent difficulty of any individual to comprehend the nature of the opposite gender – a dynamic that I believe will remain long after sin is conquered. Other expressions of difficulty might be based on gross immaturity and addictions within either of the spouses. In international Blessings, it can be based on the great cultural divide and differences between each of the spouses’ families of origin. It

can also be influenced by any conflicts or wars that occurred between the spouses’ nations of origin. Then there is the influence of the Spirit World….and the list goes on.

Let me go into a little more in depth into the concept of Restoration. The first reference I found was in Chapter 2, Section 4.1,page 69:

The Kingdom of Heaven on earth is a restored world in which Satan can no longer instigate any activity. To realize this world, it is necessary for all humanity to eliminate their common base with Satan, restore their common base with God, and engage in give and take action with Him…In order to eliminate our common base with Satan and be capable of judging him, we must understand the identity and crime of Satan and accuse him before God.”…Of their own free will, human beings are to bring Satan to voluntary submission by upholding the Word of God through fulfilling their responsibility. Only in this way can we be restored to the original ideal purposed by God at the creation.

The Chapter on Resurrection, Section 1.3, page 137 states the following:

Resurrection may be defined as the process of being restored from the death caused by the Fall to life, from the realm of Satan’s dominion to the realm of God’s direct dominion, through the providence of restoration. Accordingly, whenever we repent of our sins and rise to a higher state of goodness, we are resurrected to that degree.”

That same chapter, section 2.1, page 138 explains how God carries out his work of resurrection:

First, in the history of the providence of resurrection, many of those who were entrusted with a mission exerted themselves with utmost sincerity and faith to realize the Will of Heaven. Even though they may not have fully carried out their responsibilities, based on their devotion, they broadened the foundation upon which subsequent generations can form a relationship of heart with God. We call this foundation the merit of the age in the providence of restoration. The merit of the age has increased in proportion to the foundation of heart laid by the prophets, sages and righteous people who came before us. Therefore, resurrection is carried out based on the merit of the age. Second, according to the Principle of Creation, it was God’s responsibility to create human beings and to give them His word, while it was the human portion of responsibility to reach perfection by believing in and living according to it. Similarly, in conducting the providence of resurrection, God’s responsibility is to give us His Word and guidance, and our responsibility is to believe and practice it in order to fulfill the providence. Third, according to the Principle of Creation, a person’s spirit can grow to perfection only through the physical self. Likewise, in the providence of resurrection, the resurrection of a spirit can be achieved only through earthly life. Fourth, according to the Principle of Creation, a person is meant to reach perfection through the three ordered stages of the growing period. Therefore, the providence

of resurrection for fallen people is also to be completed through three ordered stages, manifested as three ages in the providence of restoration.

This is further developed in Chapter 6, (Restoration), section 1.1, on pages 176-178:

How does God separate Satan from fallen people who stand in the midway position? Satan relates with them on the basis of his connection with them through lineage. Therefore, until people make a condition through which God can claim them as His own, there is no way God can restore them to the heavenly side….What, then is the meaning of restoration through indemnity? When someone has lost his original position or state, he must make some condition to be restored to it. The making of such conditions of restitution is called indemnity….The first is to fulfill a condition of equal indemnity….The second is to make a condition of lesser indemnity….The third is to make a condition of greater indemnity…. Next, let us study the method of fulfilling indemnity conditions. For anyone to be restored to the original position or state from which he fell, he must make an indemnity condition by reversing the course of his mistake….Who should make indemnity conditions?…To escape from Satan’s domination and be restored to the state where we rule over him, we ourselves must fulfill the necessary indemnity conditions as our portion of responsibility.

To get a fuller picture, I also found a few quotes from True Father’s speeches that speak to this issue:

From “The Complete Liquidation of the Dispensation of Restoration”, June 7th, 1992:

Then, what is the Fall of Man? The Fall of Man made the establishment of the Four Position Foundation impossible. Thus we must indemnify the Fall and completely liquidate it. We have to start all over again. We must start over again and indemnify the past mistakes. The American people and all Western people do not understand the concept of indemnity clearly. Why does God want man to suffer so much? It is not fair! We are strong people and we disagree with it. However, if the Western people refuse to live by the principle of indemnity, they will perish. We have to reverse the course of history and only through indemnity can we accomplish that. Mankind (we) cannot continue the usual way of life. The big question here is “how can I deny my false way of life? Unless I find a way to change my false way of life, I will perish. Without changing our way of life, we cannot go back to God. The only way back to God is through the zero point, we must go back to the beginning.

I also found the following quote from True Father’s speech, “Liquidation or The Completion of the Dispensation of Salvation”, June 7, 1992:

The remedy is to go backwards. If you have done something wrong, you have to correct it. If you have been using drugs, you have to stop using drugs; if you have been engaging in free sex, you have to stop such activity. Indemnity is the reverse way, and it is something which America and the Western world needs very badly. This world cannot go on the way it is going now. To discover how to deny and to negate the direction it is headed in today is a very important task for us. Otherwise, we cannot accomplish the will of God. To liberate hell, we must go the same way. To solve the individual problem of good and evil is difficult enough, but to move hell itself and liberate it is so much more difficult. It is easy to say the words, but how difficult it is to do it!…In that kind of hopeless world, someone bigger is reigning over each person. That is Satan, striding right above each person, telling him what to do, “Do this, do that. No matter how hard you try, you cannot win over me. I am stronger.” You all think about yourselves first, don’t you? That is Satan. You should think, “my way of thinking about me first is from Satan.” Then we have to ruthlessly contain ourselves, “No, no, don’t think about myself.” We have to deny ourselves, turning ourselves upside down. It is like standing on our head, with our feet in the air. Nobody is comfortable with such a drastic change. Nobody wants that, especially when they don’t understand it.

Are you getting the picture?

So the clear answer is that Restoration is the Providence of separation from the realm, influence and taint of sin as well as the Providence to make a foundation for the Messiah. And the part of the Providence of Restoration involving the separation and elimination of all expressions and forms of sin is a job that most of us are not quite done with, even after we are Blessed.

There will be trouble because of the method and nature of restoration/re-creation. Trouble and difficulty is inherent in the process – in other words, this is no easy task but a cumbersome, tedious process that must take place substantially. This process is going on constantly in the lives of each individual and couple.

It might help to remind ourselves of the original the principles by which a spirit self grows and consequently is re-born and re-grows up. My purpose in bringing this up is to underscore that the process of restoration has a substantial component or that it is just not a “mental or intellectual” process. Furthermore, being reminded of this process should underscore that the healing process is just that, a process in time. It is a substantial process that involves literally changing the spiritual cells and substance of your spiritual body. It is the design of this creation by God, that He created 2 dimensions of the cosmos, one incorporeal and one corporeal. Both of these dimensions are substantial but each is designed to fulfill a different function and purpose. Just as there are 2 substantial dimensions created by God, so humanity is created with 2 vessels that relate and interact with these dimensions. These 2 vessels are called the Physical Self and the Spirit Self. The Physical Self consists of a physical body (made up of the substance and elements of the corporeal dimension, such as a slow, dense dimension of energy, matter, DNA,

genetics and various systems and processes) and a physical mind – a internal directing consciousness concerned with maintaining the functions of the physical body. The Spirit Self consists of a spiritual body (made up of the elements and substance of the incorporeal world, a less dense dimension of energy not so limited by time and space as is the corporal world and that looks similar in shape and form to the physical body) and a spiritual mind (which can be likened to the mind, heart and soul of a human being).

Let us also examine the fundamental relationship between the concept of growth and God’s purpose in creating the 2 realms of corporeal and incorporeal. In simplest terms, the corporal world is humanity’s growing place while the incorporeal domain is humanity’s eternal dwelling place or where we are meant to live forever. For this to be accomplished, God set into place the following principle – that the Spirit Self can only grown on the foundation and through the interaction with the Physical Self and while dwelling in the corporeal world. Essentially, when a child is born, he/she come into this world with a young, immature, undeveloped physical body/physical mind and a young, immature, undeveloped spirit body/spirit mind which initially comes from God and at birth is bonded to the physical body/physical mind which acts like a landing pad or base for the spirit self. After birth, the process of growth begins and is accomplished through the interaction or give and take between the Physical Self (and by extension the corporal world) and the Spirit Self (and by extension the incorporeal world). It is quite crucial to emphasize that the Spirit Self can only grow while it is connected to a Physical Self that resides in the corporal world. From Section 6.3.2, from pages 48 – 49 the following section underscores this crucial principle.

The spirit can grow only while it abides in the flesh. Thus, the relationship between the physical self and the spirit self is similar to that between a tree and its fruit…It can be inferred from the above that the spirit self can attain perfection only during a person’s earthly life.

Based on the preceding paragraphs, I would now like to speak about the actual dynamics and process of interaction that must occur within the corporeal and incorporeal worlds with and between the physical self and spirit self to result in the development or growth of the spirit self towards perfection and the 3 Blessings. The process involves the Physical Self or the Spirit Self receiving elements, having give and take with those elements and absorbing of those elements. The result of that process is an actual, substantial, developmental, quantitative and qualitative change in the Physical Self and the Spirit Self or growth/change. The elements that the Physical Self receives include air, sunlight (intangible or yang types of nourishment), food and water (tangible or yin types of nourishment) and a third element, called living spirit elements that move from the Spirit Self to the Physical Self and forms the life connection between the Physical Self and the Spirit Self. The elements that the Spirit Self receives include life elements (intangible or yang types of nourishment) and vitality elements (tangible or yin types of nourishment). Life Elements are those elements that are intangibles such as thought, words, emotions, feelings and will – which we relate to with our Spirit Mind/Heart. The Physical Self produces vitality elements through its actions as directed by the Spirit Mind. These are then absorbed by the Spirit Self and end up building up the spiritual

cells, tissue and actual substance of that Spirit Self. A most central and key point is that the types of elements that are absorbed determine the health and goodness of the resultant entity. So if the Physical Self absorbs unhealthy food, water, air, light, mental and spirit self-elements (such as evil, negative intentions & directions) then the resultant Physical Self will be unhealthy, evil, deformed and stunted. However, if that Physical Self absorbs wholesome and healthy food, water, air, light, mental, emotional, loving and spirit self- elements that the resultant Physical Self will be good, healthy and vibrant. Likewise, if the Spirit Self absorbs unhealthy words, thoughts, spiritual elements, evil intentions, emotions, and hate and if the Physical Self does evil actions and deeds then the resultant Spirit Self will be unhealthy, evil, stunted, crippled, deformed and ugly. However, if the Spirit Self absorbs healthful and Godly Words & Truth, Spirit and Love and if the Physical Self does good deeds and loving actions then the resultant Spirit Self will be healthy, vibrant, powerful, dynamic and beautiful. If a Spirit Self receives and absorbs wholesome and Godly elements over time, they result in an actual substantial change and development in the Spirit Self.

This process I just reviewed is how an individual “accumulates” or shows the day-to-day effort and actions of their life. The fruit of their words, deeds and heartistic realities are reflected in the substance and quality of their Physical Self and Spirit Self. You literally are what you eat, drink, breath, think, do and feel. The Divine Principle describes the good developmental process of the Spirit Self in 3 Stages with the final goal being Perfection or the First Blessing. Those stages are that of a form spirit, a life spirit and a divine spirit. Section 6.3.2 , pages 49, describes this process:

It can be inferred from the above that the spirit self can attain perfection only during a person’s earthly. The spirit mind guides the spirit self as it grows in the soil of the physical self. The growth of the spirit self toward perfection progresses through the three orderly stages ordained by the Principle of Creation. A spirit in the formation stage of life is called a form spirit; in the growth stage, a life spirit; and in the completion stage a divine spirit. A spirit fully matures as a divine spirit when the person’s spirit self and physical self unite through perfect give and take action centered on God and form the four position foundation.

From the Bible, the Book of Galatians describes this dynamic very well:

Galatians 5:16-24 “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would. But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law. No the works of the flesh are plain; fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealously, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who does such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we

live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another, no envy of one another.”

Now since the process of restoration is actually the process of re-creation the method to resolve personal sin uses the original principles of creation, especially as pertains to growth, to deal with these subsequently acquired elements of evil, fallen nature and sin. These now spiritually deformed individuals, those person and lineages that committed sins, must go a course in the midst of time (that may take quite a while) to reverse evil, they must go through the process of paying indemnity for past mistakes and replace evil with correct actions. Then they must also change their lifestyle so as to live in a positive or Godly way or continually do good actions so as to ingest good vitality elements. In other words, the evil must be undone and replaced with right, loving, selfless and Godly substantial actions. This is a slow, tedious and substantial process. Not only that, but the fallen nature that pushed a person to commit those personal sins – the nature that can be condensed down to the simple concept of selfishness and self-firstness will try to reassert itself for a very long time. I do need to point out that, the one personal sin that cannot be restored by this approach would be the committing of illicit love or repeating the Fall – this mistake can only be restored by the Blessing of True Parents.

Based on our understanding of the process to remove personal sin, our understanding of the resolution of hereditary sin can be built. Basically, the resolution of hereditary sin involves the same processes utilized in the resolution of personal sin - reversal, indemnity and correct action, nature and heart - but it must also utilize the principles of returning resurrection. The whole process can be likened to the elimination and the reversal of personal sin for each and every individual’s ancestor – going back to the beginning (though stopping short of Adam and Eve – that is the responsibility of the new Adam and Eve only). The unique aspect of this resolution is that it needs to be done in cooperation with descendants living in the corporal world. This is because, as explained in the section of resurrection which deals with principle of returning resurrection, all change or growth to a spirit self must be done on the foundation of the physical body in order that the spirit self can gain the required vitality elements necessary for growth and change. (“Third, according to the Principle of Creation, a person’s spirit can grow to perfection only through the physical self. Likewise, in the providence of resurrection, the resurrection of a spirit can be achieved only through earthly life.”)

The process can be compared to a parent vicariously living their life through their children. In the process of returning resurrection, restoration of an individual’s mistakes and sins done during their earthly lives must be undone and then correctly re-done vicariously through their connection to and cooperation with living descendants or human beings living in the corporal world. One way this is done is by those descendants living in the corporal world resisting and then doing correct actions in the reverse of every evil tendencies, motivations, nature, heart and actions committed by their ancestor. It is precisely because of this principle that I understand there to be a limit to returning resurrection being accomplished just by liberating ancestors. This process can certainly help, but eventually those ancestors have to change by undoing the evil and doing good vicariously (and eventually fulfilling the 3 Blessings) with the help of their descendants

or earthbound humanity. Of course, somewhere in the process, they absolutely need to receive the Blessing.

Well, let’s get back to the main theme (in fact the prior section can be considered an appendix and briefly reviewed – it is not necessary to take a lot of time to review the content – the key point is that just as the original growth process is a substantial one in the midst of the dimension of time, so is the re-growth process). Another key reason that trouble will exist within our Blessings is the fact that our Blessings take place prior to each of us accomplishing our 1st Blessing and so, actually, our Blessings are out of the Order originally prescribed by the Principle. Let me share one section of Linna Rapkins’s “Stories of True Parents” describing the blessing of the first 3 couples :

He talked about many things, but after a while he started talking about perfection. “If you give up everything you own and work as hard as you can and get hardly any sleep and are absolutely, you MIGHT become perfect in about 70 years,” he said. “Furthermore, that could only happen if you had been a good person all your life and if your ancestors were good people, as well.”…Father continued, “And you know by now that becoming perfect yourself is the first blessing, and getting married is the second blessing. If you are married before you are perfected as an individual, your marriage will have many problems. Ahl-ah-yo? (Do you understand?)…But, we have a problem here,” said Father. “If we wait until you are fully perfected, no one will ever get married while on earth, at least not until you’re too old to have children. Yet Heavenly Father cannot be happy until he has blessed families all around him.” This appeared to be an impossible situation. You have to be perfect to be married, but God can’t be happy if you aren’t blessed in marriage. Father’s eves focused on one person and then another as he looked around the room to see if they understood. “So,” he continued, “Heavenly Father wants a few of you to be blessed now.

Now, think about this for a moment. Why would this “out of orderness” cause trouble in a Blessing? What comes to mind is that the individuals in such a marriage are handicapped by their lack of maturity and certain key and essential spiritual, emotional and mental tools and abilities. For example, they would lack the full connection to the Love of God that is needed for any individual to truly be able to love and cherish the other. They would also lack the ability to see all situations from God’s point of view and thus to be less able to make discerning and correct assessments of any given situation. They would lack wisdom and compassion and instead would probably often be full of judgment due to their pea-sized spiritual heart. They would lack the emotional stability, mental sharpness, self-control and skill/practice/expertise of being able to fulfill their portion of responsibility all the time. Surely such abilities are crucial for the development of true success and joy in any relationship and especially in that most central relationship called marriage. And yet, most of us come into our blessings with a very small bank account of individual merit and maturity that we can draw upon. Is it a wonder that such dysfunctional people end up creating dysfunctional marriages?

Let’s get back to the Good News!

The Blessing is a Providence to initiate the realm of the Second Blessing, at least conditionally and initially in form. This means that it represents the establishment and development of the institution of Marriage. This also means that, finally, after the long history of Restoration, God can recognize your Marriage. What a phenomenal value is contained in the Blessing! Such a statement would then imply that all marriages prior to the Blessing are not actually allowed or authorized by God. This is also a phenomenal statement. Indeed, when we look at the History of the Providence of Restoration we can see that this is the case, that the focal point of that Providence was for individuals to make the proper foundation to welcome the Messiah. It was not a providence of holy families, but rather one of holy men and women within, but often opposed to families who were working to advance the Providence of Heaven. The Bible speaks to this point. In the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 20: 27 - 36 Jesus was asked about the following situation:

There came to him some Sadducees, those who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the wife and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first took a wife and died without children; and the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife. And Jesus said to them, ‘The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.

There is also the famous passage from St. Paul on the topic of marriage from the book of I Corinthians, Chapter 7, starting with verse 8:

To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion…Now concerning the unmarried, I have no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. I think that in view of the present distress, it is well for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek marriage. But if you marry, you do not sin, and if a girl marries she does not sin. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. I mean, brethren, the appointed time has grown very short; from now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the form of this world is passing away. I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord, but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and

his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord…So that he who marries his betrothed does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better.”

I relation to this disclosure, it is clear why it is necessary to seek the Blessing of the True Parents for both those individuals seeking to be engrafted onto the true lineage that emerges from the True Parents and for those children that are born into this lineage and are thereby extensions of it. From God’s perspective, originally the only couples that were to be authorized to marry were those who emanated from the first Adam and Eve, but only after God gave Adam and Eve permission to marry. Since that first Adam and Eve fell and were never granted that permission, the lineage that was established by them was never authorized by God. That means that Adam and Eve’s marriage and every single marriage that was established by their descendants (that means all individuals who have not participated in, or been born based on, the conversion of lineage sacrament) are not eternal and therefore do not continue on into the spirit world. At the time of the advent of the second Adam, Jesus, humanity had the first opportunity to establish Godly authorized marriages but, since Jesus never married and was therefore not able to establish the True Parents and the sacrament of engrafting or rebirth through the Blessing, God’s and humanity’s hope was postponed. From the time of the Second Advent and the establishment of True Parents who are the 3rd Adam and Eve and who have established the sacrament of the Blessing and the true lineage of God, the only marriages that are permitted and recognized by God are those marriages Blessed through the authority of the True Parents. These marriages are eternal and do continue on into the spirit world.

Well, are you ready for more good news? I thought so - The greatest good news is that, even with all the disadvantages that are probable to appear in newly emerging Blessed marriages, because these marriages are approved by God there is hope for success. The path to accomplishing the 3 Blessings has been opened wide through the sacrament of the Blessing, unencumbered by those spiritual barriers, shackles, dysfunctional ties and even atrocities that have been heaped upon individuals, families, tribes, societies, nations, world-level and the cosmos resulting in misery and thwarting true growth as a result of the fall can be dismantled and eliminated. Those barriers which have imprisoned humanity, cursed our very existence and continually crushed our desperate efforts to fulfill our great potential as well as our deepest desires for a peaceful and good world, are now crumbling because of the marriage Blessing sacrament give through the authority of the True Parents. There is also hope for success because we have the example of True Parents who are leading the way and encouraging and instructing us on our path. In fact, every couple that receives the marriage Blessing through the authority of the True Parents is able to participate in and contribute to the development of the providence of developing and accomplishing the second Blessing, including building and perfecting the family providence. Until the time of the True Parents and the advent of the true lineage, this was never possible!

So this is an exciting time indeed, where each Blessed couple s efforts will benefit their own family and also provide merit that can be reaped by all humanity throughout the coming ages. I want to re-emphasize that there is hope for each couple to get beyond the troubles currently inherent in marriages and to be able to create successful, prosperous and ideal marriages and families. I must remind you that God purposed each child to marry and establish a Blessed Central Family where our Heavenly Parents would be in their midst. Such families are to be the school where we learn to love and fully realize and fulfill the purpose of the second Blessing. It is only when dynamic, reciprocal relationships between couples that perfectly resemble the duality and unity of God and who also reflect the creative and parental heart of God in their family, and our Heavenly Parent, that a world of eternal love and joy can finally emerge. Such families become the base upon which the God hoped for realization of the extended Second Blessing – the Kingdom of God on Earth and then in the Spirit World- is realized. It is quite literally true that the Kingdom of God is built on the foundation of the ideal family, the realized four position foundation, one family at a time. I didn’t bring up the idea of dealing with sin to depress you but to just provide a fuller picture of all the dimensions and reality of the Blessing. However, I would encourage each of you to place the greater emphasis on the possibility of fulfilling this ideal of the 3 Blessings. Absolutely, emphasize the positive for it is from this that you will be empowered and supported in the process.

Let me offer 4 great tools that can be helpful in this transformation process. Let me summarize these 4 tools in the following way. You need to have faith in, know, understand the Truth and also cultivate a deep and vibrant relationship with God. You need to continue working on your growth to perfection even after you receive the Blessing, as well as your spouse’s growth to perfection and your children’s as well and in the midst of life. You also need to center yourself on the tremendous Ideal that is gifted to humanity through the understanding of the purpose of creation. Apply these tools to life and you can surely advance towards accomplishing success in your individual life and your family life.

*First, know, understand and have faith in the Truth. Francis Bacon once said “Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est” or knowledge is power. Indeed, knowing the Word of God is so important. To understand that the true course of life is one of Restoration and to understand those Principles of the Restoration is such a gift. Knowledge of the original cause and nature of sin can allow us to protect ourselves from repeating the horrific past mistakes of history. With such a clear understanding of the Process of the Fall and nature of sin, there is the potential for us to recognize patterns of behavior that must be avoided at all costs. Also, knowing the original cause of humanities’ sickness can allows effective cures to be gleaned and applied. Additionally, I believe the clear understanding of the Purpose of Creation as expressed through the 3 Blessing is one of the most amazing gifts given to humankind.

*Second, knowledge of the Truth is not enough; it must be coupled with a deep and abiding faith in that Truth and the source of that Truth. Faith is a difficult thing to define, but I believe it can be likened to a heartistic and soulful response and affinity to the Word wherein you know/trust to the depth of your being that it is true and of God and are

willing to act based on that response without regard to any time limit. It becomes your number one priority, your reference point and is what drives you forward throughout your life. From the point of the awakening of faith forward, you are eternally committed to live, act and have your whole spirit and being centered on the content and reality revealed by those Words. Faith might be described as putting your spiritual muscle where your mouth is – it’s a whole spirit acknowledgement instead of just mental recognition. Certainly such a hearkening to those Words is essential and required for us to utilize those Words and is one of those qualities that must be freely given from humanity. Perhaps we can describe it as the heart filled response, recognition and hearkening to the Presence of God shining through His Revelation. The Book of Hebrews describes it in Chapter 11, verses 1-3: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not see. For by it the men of old received divine approval. By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear.” The deepest and most abiding faith, I believe, must emanate from your original mind – as opposed to the conscience. According to section 6.3.3 of the Principle of Creation (page 50-51), the conscience is a faculty within each human beings spirit or mind that directs them towards doing what they believe to be good and right.

The conscience is that faculty of the human mind which, by virtue of its inborn nature, always directs us toward what we think is good….The original mind is that faculty of the human mind which pursues absolute goodness. It relates to the conscience as internal nature to external form. A person’s conscience directs him to pursue goodness according to the standard which he has set up in ignorance, even though it may differ from the original standard. However, the original mind, being sensitive to the proper direction, repels this faulty standard and works to correct the conscience.

The Original Mind is, however, is the faculty of the human spirit or mind that knows absolute goodness and pursues it. The Original Mind, as the word original implies, is that part of the Spirit Self that retains the ability to link directly with the Spirit of God and where the sense and knowledge of the original ideal of God (the Commandment, the 3 Blessings, the Logos, the Principles of God, and True Love) remains. I often envision it as the place we go to in our spirit/mind when we are checking to see if our current realities are right and good. For example, for those of us who were born into a less than perfect family, how did we know that our physical parents were not absolutely good? On what basis or gauge did we judge or criticize them – what internal standard were we comparing them to? I would suggest that we are subconsciously comparing our life’s experience to the ideal by checking in with our Original Mind. A child doesn’t have to be told that something is lacking when they are not given enough love by their parents – they just know they are missing something that is their entitlement. I call that internal source of mind and heart that resides in the depth of our soul that we go to on a very subconscious and intuitive level our Original Mind. It is the place where we are able to synchronize our internal tuning fork with God’s, thereby harmonizing with God’s Shim jung frequency. It is our original compass and we were created to be guided by it. In one sense, it could be called our original programming. For example, when I was about age 12 or 13, I had a mystical encounter with the Living God. In that experience, some place

deep within my spirit exploded with joy and I was enraptured and in bliss and I knew that I was created to always be in a full relationship with that Being. I just knew and from that time I also knew that nothing else was more important in life that being one with my God. What part of me knew that? What part of me responded to meeting my God with such a gut level sense that this was where I was created to be and with such overwhelming happiness and joy? I knew, felt and my heart was full of the understanding that this was what I was created for – to be one with God. That place that I was responding from is what I call the Original Mind. I would suggest that the truest basis of faith occurs when our soul checks to see if the reality we are encountering agrees with the content of our Original Mind and if so, then, and only then, commits to that reality.

The formula for successful spiritual growth needs the two elements of the Word and Faith in the Word. The combination of the Word and Faith in the Word is a potent one. The Principle is clear that such a combination is required to both resist evil and sin and to accomplish or fulfill the Purpose of Creation. From Chapter 2, Section 3.2, pages 66-67 we find the following guidance:

In their immature state, Adam and Eve could not be directly governed by God though love. Because the power of love is stronger than the power of the Principle, God foresaw that if they ever formed a common base with the Archangel, there was a possibility that they could succumb to the power of deviant, unprincipled love and fall. To prevent this, God gave Adam and Eve the commandment that forbade them from relating with the Archangel in this way. No matter how powerful, the unprincipled love of the Archangel might be, had Adam and Eve adhered to God’s commandment, forming a common base with God and engaging in give and take with Him and no other, the power of the Archangel’s unprincipled love would not have affected them and they would never have fallen…It was not only to prevent their fall that God gave immature human beings the commandment. God also wanted them to enjoy dominion over the natural world – including the angels-by inheriting His creative nature. In order to inherit this creatorship, human beings should perfect themselves through their faith in the Word as their own portion of responsibility.”

Perhaps a key point here is that, in our immature state and while growing through the indirect dominion, God cannot govern us through His love because our hearts are unable to grasp and respond to His Love. Instead, God guides us through the Truth and as our spiritual essence develops through following the truth we become more and more heartistically able to be governed by His love. Perhaps we can liken it to the inability of a child to truly grasp the love his or her parents feel for them – that ability to respond heart to heart develops as the child matures. However, since the core essence of God is Heart and Love, He ultimately wishes that our relationship with Him be totally rooted and governed at the level of that Heart and Love. The key point is that only through embodying the perfection based on the Principle, will have the maturity of Heart that will enable us to be governed by God in such a way. You could say, for us to be able to “get it”, for the fog to lift and for us to see clearly and sharply, we have to be mature and not only that, but to have arrived there based on our fulfilling our portion of responsibility.

Perhaps another way to describe faith is that it is the response from humanity that allows us to connect to that purpose and plan of God and thus be empowered to fulfill our portion of responsibility. From the Divine Principle, Chapter 1, Section 5.2.2, page 43, the essence of the Indirect Dominion is described:

During the growing period, all beings in the creation grow by virtue of the autonomy and governance given by God’s Principle. God, the Author of the Principle, as regard only for the fruits of their growth which are based on the Principle. In this way, He governs all things indirectly. We call this growing period the realm of God’s indirect dominion or the realm of dominion based on accomplishments through the Principle. All things reach perfection after passing through the growing period (the realm of indirect dominion) by virtue of the autonomy and governance given by God’s Principle. Human beings, however, are created in such a way that their growth requires the fulfillment of their own portion of responsibility, in addition to the guidance provided by the Principle. They must exercise this responsibility in order to pass successfully through the growing period and reach perfection

Remember, this is a spiritual fight, as is well documented in the following passage from the Book of Ephesians, Chapter 6: 10-20. This fight cannot be won solely based on the power of the mind. It needs strong spiritual conviction and protection for defensive and offensive efforts to be effective:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; beside all these, taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that utterance may be given me in opening my moth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.

I have found an amazing quote from a question and answer session with Our True Father that was given during his visit to the United States in 1965. This particular section is entitled “The Master Speaks on Satan, The Fall, and Evil”. In it, he does clarify that we can meet with and speak to God throughout the Indirect Dominion. This confirms to me

that the ability to sense and be in touch with the Love of God develops over time and on the basis of our growth through the Principle.

Question: Adam and Eve were told not to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Were they told in the same way in which our Master was told the Divine Principle, by having an even conscience—that is, on a level- - and then establishing a vertical contact with God. If not, then how were they told? They were in the Indirect Dominion; and God did not tell them directly, did He?

Answer: The 90 degree angle was not necessary for Adam. It is only necessary for us because we are under satanic domination, so we have to have an even conscience to receive God’s thought. It did not apply to Adam. The command not to eat of the fruit was given to Adam directly. It did not violate the Indirect Dominion. The Direct Dominion of God implies the Direct Dominion of man’s love by God. Apart from this love, God could teach them directly, even in their Growth Stage. He could give the command directly, but He could not interfere or have dominion over Adam and Eve;s love directly. If Adam and Eve had asked God whether they should respond to Lucifer, then God could have told them directly. When I said that I make a condition beforehand, I mean that I always ask God if it is all right to offer my offering. Then God is responsible to answer. But Adam and Eve did not ask God. So in the indirect dominion, if you ask God, He has to tell you. But God cannot control human love. That happens only in the Direct Dominion.

Question: what do you mean by “control human love?”

Answer: During the time when children are growing, they do not know love. These days, children see through TV and through parents, they see the love affair before they really mature and sense by themselves. In Adam and Eve’s case, they had nothing to see. They did not know about sexual love. As long as they didn’t know anything about it, God could not teach them. God had to wait until they matured and knew something about it before they could come under His Direct Dominion. Until that time, God could not tell them, “Don’t do this. Don’t have a sexual relationship with Lucifer”. Through natural growth and development, they would have matured and learned to know of love. They God could have blessed them in marriage. They were just to grow naturally, and when they reached the point when they came to know one another, then God wanted to bless them. It is different from the state of children today. They know things before they actually mature. So Direct Dominion means direct control of their love by His love. In all other things, God could give them a direct command, but not about love relationships. Lucifer knew about sexual love before Adam and Eve were aware of it. He was not told this directly, but knew it in his heart.”….If I told you what they were told, it would not be good. This information is not written anywhere, and if I say it now what I say will spread. Even though God told them fairly clearly, Adam and Eve did not take it seriously. God said, “Don’t respond to Lucifer’s temptation. Don’t love him.” But those things did not sound serious to

them. When one is too young and is not aware of things, some commands do not make sense. You cannot tell things too early. But the angel knew.

There is another reason why God seemed to be absent during this crucial time in Adam and Eve’s live and perhaps in ours. It is because man’s portion of responsibility must be exercised in the environment of freedom of will. Essentially mankind must willingly participate in the process towards and the final accomplishment of Perfection and additionally, must be able to navigate and grow without exception through the potentially difficult path towards that Perfection without fail. We may often feel alone in this journey because God, to ensure the sanctity of the Crown of Co-Creatorship, cannot interfere with human responsibility. But, as Father is pointing out, if Adam and Eve had sought out God’s counsel, he absolutely could have answered. And so, I believe, it is with us. This brings me to the second dimension of faith. That is the need for us to have faith in God and connect to God in addition to having faith in His Word. What would be the value of being connect to God (besides the fact that there is nothing so blissful and sweet in the world than to be in His presence and Love)? What immediately comes to mind is the benefit of being able to see any given situation from the most comprehensive and clear perspective – God’s Point of View. This would be the opposite from the first fallen nature of failure to see from God’s Point of View.

A second reason that comes to mind is that being in a close relationship with God is so sweet that we would, without hesitation and from our very soul, be strongly motivated to follow and utilize His Principles. Ultimately, I believe that such a vital relationship with God can afford us much protection and empowerment along our path to perfection. So, at the top of the list of things you need to do to be able to be successful in life and in your Blessing is to develop a real, deep, loving connection to our Heavenly Father. Remember that you must earnestly ask, knock and seek for Your God and at your outreach doors will be opened and opportunities will make themselves available to you to develop this most essential relationship. In this crucial journey within which you must exhibit personal mastery, please be wise and utilize those spiritual practices that have been shown to strengthen our spiritual muscles, demonstrate our determination to follow God’s Way and bring a higher spiritual atmosphere around us such as; prayer, spiritual conditions, study of God’s Words, tithing, attending Church services and activities, offering public service as an example of living for the sake of others, being active in public missions and emulating the lifestyle, faith and love of our spiritual forefathers. The top of that list is Our True Parents but also to include physical and/or spiritual parents (could be one in the same), teachers, mentors, saints and sages – both modern and past.

*Third, just as Adam and Eve were to have made heroic efforts to avoid the fall in the midst of the growth years while they were working on growing their spiritual lives, so we, who are to pioneer the way of life of a true son and daughter of God, must also make continual progress towards fulfilling the 1st Blessing in the midst of our lives. There are so many benefits to this tact, not the least being that the closer to perfection we get; the easier it would have been for us to see with God’s eyes and heart or for our hearts and minds to resonate with God. To apply this scenario in our lives, we need to learn and also apply/practice the Principle, especially principles of spiritual growth, on a daily basis.

This would probably be a good time to introduce the idea that God can and does work through representatives on the earth. We need to hearken to God’s chosen champions and their words of insight and goodness. Our True Parents have the unique anointing to be the source of humanity’s salvation into a Godly Lineage and also the models of lives lived based on a heavens traditions; the example we should study and emulate in the building of true families, societies, nations and world imbued with a Godly Culture. We should also be vigilant to watch for the presence of God words and heart revealed through those representing a vertical/ parental position or simply an Abel-like attitude or heart (look for the internal Abel) – though we always need to check those words against the principle and our original minds. Again, by our doing good works centered on God’s Word, studying God’s Words, developing a vital and vivid relationship with God through utilizing pray, by setting indemnity and living a living for the sake of other’s lifestyle we can divest ourselves of distortions in our spiritual self and gain the good vitality elements needed to hasten our advance towards perfection. By living a public lifestyle and connecting to God’s Providence, we also make conditions to separate from Satan and elevate our spirit and thus come closer to God. This is a proactive approach as opposed to a reactive/defensive approach. This is the meaning of Chapter 4:8-10 from the Book of Philippians:

“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, do; and the God of peace will be with you.”

Now it doesn’t hurt to reinforce the perspective that all of our efforts to achieve and strive for perfection do not occur in a vacuum. The task of achieving perfection on the foundation of ethics, purity and fidelity constantly occurs within a pretty pervasive environment of evil or sin, sometimes subtle and sometimes blatant. All efforts to advance and fulfill God’s purpose occur in a veritable battleground between the forces of good and the forces of evil. It is paramount that we enter into this spiritual battleground with effective weapons and armor and equip ourselves with the best strategy and tactics possible. To not do this is naïve, foolhardy, shortsighted and can end with disastrous results. You can be sure that the satanic forces are well equipped and professional in advancing their cause. On key protection that is required to keep the momentum of spiritual growth advancing is the utilization of sexual and moral purity prior to a blessed marriage and fidelity after your blessed marriage. The central position of such behavior is deeply underscored in the following quote from the 10th Peace Message given by Reverend Moon on the occasion of the 47th True Children’s Day, Nov 21, 2006:

Ladies and gentlemen, it was necessary for Adam and Eve to establish a model, peaceful, ideal family. God, the Absolute Being, created human beings as His children in order to instill in them absolute values on the basis of an absolute standard. Thus, human beings must follow the way of that absolute standard in keeping with the demands of the heavenly path. This means we must follow our destined life course in order to attend God, the Absolute Being, as our Parent. In other words, for people to perfect themselves in resemblance of God and obtain

the stature of people of character who can be called sons and daughters of the Absolute Being, they must follow the path based on the absolute standard God has determined. The essence of this path is the standard of absolute sexual purity.” (Moon, pg 144)

Certainly one keys reasons for this requirement lies in the need for humanity to practice for and prepare to uphold the absoluteness of conjugal love and to uphold the heavenly law of absolute fidelity.

“Second is the model of absoluteness in the love of husband and wife. More precious than life itself, this is the heavenly law of absolute fidelity. Husband and wife are eternal partners given to each other by Heaven. Through having children, they become the co-creators of true love, true life and true lineage and the origin of that which is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal…without adhering to the principle of absolute sexual purity, the path to the perfection of one’s character and spiritual maturity is closed. Furthermore, without securing the foundation of absolute sexual morality within a true family of perfected individuals, it is impossible for God to manifest His presence in dignity as the incarnate God of character. (Moon, 2006, The Family Rooted in Absolute Sexual Ethics, pg 145-146)

I would like to digress briefly to discuss this dynamic in a little more depth. As we study in the Divine Principle, each and every human being and further, all beings/species and elements/expressions of substance/matter in this vast creation embody two dual characteristics – internal nature/external form and the dual characteristics of masculinity/positivity and femininity/negativity. Further, these dualities are vibrantly, constantly, dynamically interacting (give and take action) due to the directive power of Universal Prime Energy and subsequently generating forces of give and take action which act as the foundation for the existence of their union and as well as resulting in multiplication. A special expression of this dynamism of dualities is found in the human social dynamic known as a marriage union, or that bond that is created between husband and wife. Father is declaring that such a union must be grounded upon the law of absolute fidelity, that the founding of a marriage must be entered into based on absolute exclusivity. In light of this revelation, the preparation for such a union needs to respect the exclusive nature of the resultant relationship and thus requires that each individual, while in the process of arriving at that sought for goal, discipline him or herself in order to achieve and then eternally maintain such an absolute standard by embodying a celibate lifestyle, shunning all premature / exploratory attempts to sample or investigate exclusive coupling. Thus, a casual dating lifestyle, especially one of a promiscuous nature, is definitely out.

When it is time for a person to marry, which itself should be determined on the foundation of prayerfulness and a vibrant spiritual life, he or she should approach the process with a deliberate and focused seriousness of spirit, by absolutely and prayerfully eliciting and seeking God’s help in finding the right person for their exclusive spouse since God know best the person that He has uniquely designed to be that person’s eternal

mate. The best way to learn of His Will and choice is to seek that expression of His guidance and will through those who represent the vertical, parental position/standard, especially the Messiah or His anointed representatives or, as granted in this era for those born into the true lineage, faithful parents. The phenomenal characteristic of this exclusive union is that, in fact, it is the very doorway by which couples can attain a phenomenological, cosmological experience of the multiplicity and variety of all the dualities of this creation/cosmos and further experience a sympathetic, empathetic vibratory sense of oneness with the vastness of this creation/cosmos on the deepest and most profound level. It is through the ONE that we, in fact, experience and embody the many and perhaps more importantly, this same dynamic doesn’t work in the converse direction, or you cannot achieve that one perfect union by experiencing as many unions as possible – such a profound and overwhelming experience will elude you if you attempt to follow such a convoluted track. Let’s review the following quote (Moon, pg 30, Divine Principle) in light of this revolutionary statement:

Let us discuss from another viewpoint how human beings are the center of the cosmos, which is composed of both the spirit world and the physical world. Every human being embodies all the elements in the cosmos. Yet, as we discussed earlier, everything in the cosmos can be divided broadly into subject partners and object partners. Had Adam, the first human ancestor, reached perfection, he would have embodied all the subject elements in the things of creation. Had Eve attained perfection, she would have embodied all the object elements in the things of creation. God created Adam and Eve to have dominion over the natural world. Growing toward perfection, Adam was to become the king of all the subject elements in the creation and Eve was to become the queen of all the object elements. If they had then become on as husband and wife, they would have become the center that could rule the entire universe consisting of subject partners and object partners.

Human beings are created to be the center of harmony of the whole cosmos. If Adam and Eve had attained perfection and united as husband and wife, it would have meant the joining into oneness of the two centers of the dual characteristics of all beings. Had Adam and Eve moved together in harmony and attained oneness, the whole cosmos with its dual characteristics would have danced in harmony. The place where Adam and Eve become perfectly one in heart and body as husband and wife is also the place where God, the subject partner giving love, and human beings, the object partner returning beauty, become united. This is the center of goodness where the purpose of creation is fulfilled. . . .

It is my personal opinion that the cosmic design of multiplicity being embodied within an exclusive union has its root in the nature of God, that the creation personifies this reality in either image or symbol form. God is One, and yet that oneness is the source of all the latent, potential and actualized manifestation of every characteristics and dynamics that

were ever or will ever be manifested in the totality of creation/cosmos/universe - without end, – radically awesome!

Never ever forget that at all time in your Blessed life, you must also continue to strive to help your spouse accomplish their first Blessing. For after being Blessed, you are responsible to encourage and support your spouse’s and then your children’s efforts to fulfill their first Blessing. By doing this you will ultimately be contributing to the success of your own journey to perfection. Only when the couple and family stands on the foundation of their fulfillment of the First Blessing, can the second Blessing be fully realized and developed to the extent of God’s envisioned ideal. It is for that reason that I advise each of you to stop thinking of yourself as individuals and only focusing just upon your own internal drive for perfection and self-fulfillment/accomplishment and personal desires. After Blessing, you are an eternal couple and each partner must also think about the other’s fulfillments and accomplishments of their God-given potential. It is no longer just about me – it is about us/we and the journey to the Kingdom that we are taking together.

The Kingdom of God, both on earth and in the spirit world, is a place where love abounds and what greater starting place for the dynamic of love than a family that is bound together by true love. You will never truly be joyful and have eternal peace if you arrive at the Kingdom alone – in fact, you won’t be remotely comfortable as an eternal resident. The ultimate goal is for each family to stand before our Heavenly Parent and be in an eternal reciprocal relationship with He and She as a couple, family, tribe, nation and world. Take this to the extent that you juggle both perspectives simultaneously and continually. Do special and mundane activities together such as vacations (which should, of course, be whole family events) and also couple away times, shopping, cleaning the house, date nights, adventurous activities, attending church and other venues of community spiritual fellowship, devotional time, witnessing and outreach, etc. - work as a team and be creative in these “we” endeavors and make this balancing act between the self and the other your way of life. This paradigm/model needs to extend out from the couple and be reflected in all sorts of dynamic partnering, full of “living for the sake of other” practices and “WE thinking”, between parents and children and amongst siblings. The key point is that couples and families need to become entities where “living for the sake of the other” and “WE thinking” becomes a way of life. Ultimately, this way of heart and mind should also naturally extend outside the family, becoming the basis for a moral system and governing ethic, that of living for the sake of the family, tribe, society, people, nation, cosmos, and God – truly making the family a school of love!

There is an important lesson to be learned from the third tool. Essentially, this tool is taping in to the truth that love is a verb which is actualized through the process of living for the sake of the other. Since most of the subsequent results of the fall, including the fallen nature, stemmed from the root of selfishness or self-firstness within a relationship and because the course of restoration is a course of the reversal of mistakes or wrong action, it makes total sense that the course of restoration of the fall and, in actuality, all sinful behavior and motivations, must involve acting in opposition to selfishness and self-centered benefit and replacing those behaviors and motivations with true love and

service of and for the other substantiated. Now, I must clarify that I am certainly not saying that you should ignore your responsibility to yourself and your efforts to achieve perfection but those relationships that are only utilized to further one partner’s desires over the other will be in serious trouble and can never fulfill their full potential. Consider that if each partner in a relationship is dedicated to serving and enabling the other, as well as fulfilling their own portion of responsibility, then both partners will ultimately experience mutual prosperity through their interdependence. The wonderment of a relationship/partnership that is built on this modality is that each partner will find it easier to accomplish their own portion of responsibility because they are enabled and supported by their partner. Thus, the most fulfilling relationships are those where love and support characterize a dynamic, other concerning interaction as well as a personal commitment to individual excellence and accomplishment.

Add to this mix, the idea that relationships usually contain partners who complement each other’s strengths as well as embodying areas of weakness. Dealing with an inequality of strengths as well as weakness and immaturities in oneself and the other can be daunting and debilitating to a relationship or can result in both partners becoming better through the relationship. In such relationships, heartfelt qualities such as compassion, generousness, charity and forgiveness rather than caustic criticism, judgment and accusation can be healing salve to the soul and can enable purpose driven progress towards balance and fullness of character in both partners. It is important to pay serious attention to the idea that both parties in every relationship such as cain/abel, friends, siblings, spouses and parents and children on the individual level and between groups, communities, races, religions, societies, cultures and nations on a micro, meso and macro level, need to be guided by this prescription of love and service to the other as part of the process to undo tangled messes of historical divisions, harm and atrocities as well as to avoid introducing problematic behavior and additional sinfulness going forward. This becomes more telling if we recall that the Archangel Lucifer turned into Satan because he acted on and substantiated his resentment, egoistic and self-benefitting impulses. This prescription clarifies why religions entreat their devotees to be humble and why Jesus taught that we should love our neighbor and even our enemies.

Now, when I say True Love, I am again reminding the reader that in human relationships, love must be grounded in ethical and moral behavior. As mentioned earlier, in a marriage, for example, it means that each partner must be sexually, emotionally and heartistically exclusive and faithful to each other while living for the sake of the other, honoring and encouraging their partner’s God given purpose and value. This also underscores why the morality of “the ends justifies the means” is, in fact, diametrically opposed to true human behavior. The application of ethics to morality and behavior; love and service to benefit the other; compassion, charity and a generous heart in response to weaknesses as the best protocol to encourage and support the partners efforts to challenge and finally overcome their weaknesses; gracious contribution of one partner’s strengths to complement the weakness of the other and vice versa; and each individual fulfilling their own portion of responsibility (though sometimes this is an eventuality) are the real keys that will transform a struggling Blessed relationship into one which becomes a fertile ground of real restoration and process to the ideal.

Let me share from Davelin Popov, of the “Family Virtues Guide” and “A Pace of Grace”

Spiritual companioning requires the awareness that we cannot keep each other happy but we can keep each other company. We can only walk beside one another in the journey of life. We cannot control one another nor do the spiritual work of the other in our relationship. The purpose of spiritual companioning is to help one another empty our cups and get to the heart of the matter. We do this by asking cup-emptying questions starting with “What”, “when” , and “how” – never “why”, which puts each other on the defensive.

And also from Mehri Sefidvash, Coral and Pearls, page 26-27:

Respect means wanting the other person to grow and develop into what he is and can be. Respect automatically excludes exploitation and selfish expectations. To have respect for a person we love means having the desire that he should grow and develop according to his own wishes and his own capabilities, and not just because this is useful for us.

And also from Linda Kavelin Popov, The Family Virtues Guide, p.3:

Virtue is sometimes associated with perfectionism. When it comes to human beings, to be perfect does not mean to be flawless. It means to be whole and complete. Part of the completeness of being spiritually alive and aware is to accept our flaws, our mistakes and our failings as teachable opportunities which can bring us new learning. It is in working with the virtues which we have over- or underdeveloped that we find the energy for new growth. Live is not about being perfect. It is about perfecting or cultivating our virtues. Perfection is the process of bringing our gifts to fruition.

*Fourth is to utilize the Divine Principle’s clear explanation of the Purpose of Creation as an inspiration for your journey, a tremendous illuminating gift and spiritual tool. I am sure that most of you have friends; contacts or even family who are completely confused and unclear about their purpose or even if there is a purpose of life. Yet without a purpose to live by and for, the latent potential of every human being remains just that – latent potential.

Montaigne is quoted as saying: “The great and glorious masterpiece of man is how to live with a purpose. Washington Irving said “Great minds have purposes, others have wishes”. Napoleon Hill, writing in the classic Think and Grow Rich, said that having a purpose was so important to success that people would have a different (and better) story to tell about their lives “if only they would adopt a DEFINITE PURPOSE, and stand by that purpose until it had time to become an all-consuming obsession!”

Also, from Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man/woman could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

Please wisely utilize the great understanding that all humanity’s purpose is to fulfill the 3 Blessings to aid your and all those other’s in your lives efforts on this great and difficult journey. The three blessing can serve as a compass and beacon or guiding light when our journey takes us through foggy and murky circumstances. Reflecting on it can remind us of our goal and destination and the hope, beauty, joy and love that will be our Sabbath. This great wisdom can bring peace and joy to our soul, as well as nourish us and us strength. Latch onto it and anchor your soul in its promise. Also use it as fuel to inspire you to reach for the stars and the great vision and promise of God.

In addition, the 3 Blessings can provide a sure standard and gauge to which we can compare our present state and to illuminate the difference between the future hope and our present reality. If used correctly, it can help us clearly see and admit to our shortcomings and open us to the required right actions and heart that needs to be urgently adopted and practiced if we are to fulfill those 3 Blessing. We should be careful that we apply this approach primarily to ourselves and do not use our knowledge of the 3 Blessings as a way to judge and separate from others. If we must discern or judge, then make the proportion of judgment something like this – 9 parts love to 1 part judgment. It is wise to remember that when a person points a finger in the direction of a wrong, he or she also has three other fingers are pointing back at themselves.

One other point, since we now have the beginnings of the tradition of accomplishment and the development of a momentum of goodness (something that Adam and Eve did not have but were supposed to develop for all future generations), please utilize this blossoming community of faith to support you in your efforts to accomplish the 3 Blessings. This is another valuable tool that cannot be underestimated. Also, utilizing the principle of “pay it forward”, as each of you gain victories in your family lives, please give support, wisdom and love to others and encourage them on their path (let’s see, that would be Fifth and Sixth!).

I hope the preceding content can have awakened in you both a clear awareness of the true nature of the path that stretches out ahead of you but also has encouraged you to welcome with enthusiasm and hope both the challenges and joys that will fill that path. It is so worth it! We truly stand on the threshold of a new and exciting future for humanity and

for each of you and your family. As my husband wisely said, it may be work to bend down to pick up a radiant, precious diamond but the fruit of that work justifies all the troubles you have to face and efforts that you may have to make! (The following list of Character Qualities is taken from the Character Qualities noted in the book “Pure Gold, Encouraging Character Qualities in Marriage” by Susanne M. Alexander, p128). Among the many character qualities that will enrich your life and your Blessing, I wish you “Acceptance, Assertiveness, Beauty, Caring, Chastity, Commitment, Compassion, Confidence, Contentment, Cooperation, Courage, Courtesy, Creativity, Detachment, Discernment, Encouragement, Enthusiasm, Equality, Excellence, Faithfulness, Flexibility, Forgiveness, Friendliness, Generosity, Gentleness, Helpfulness, Honesty, Humility, Idealism, Integrity, Joyfulness, Justice, Kindness, Love, Loyalty, Mercy, Moderation, Patience, Peacefulness, Perseverance, Purity, Purposefulness, Respect, Responsibility, Self-Discipline, Service, Sincerity, Spirituality, Strength, Tactfulness, Thankfulness, Thoughtfulness, Trustworthiness, Truthfulness, Unity and Wisdom”. I also wish you integrity of spirit/heart, zest for life and the tasks ahead and most of all that you will quickly reach and dwell in the full love of God forever and ever. Peace, Love and Wisdom to you and your family. Amen and Aju!

Appendix G Alice Fleisher Denver, CO 2007

 Take Away:  Free Will: Not all choices are equal  In the dynamic of my will and God’s Will –  God’s Will is Subject.  The Three Blessings are God’s Instruction Manual  To Humanity – not one of many options.

Appendix to the Talk: BLESSING = FULFILLING GODS PURPOSE OF CREATION AND RESTORATION A Look at the Macrocosmic Dimension of Restoration

As I was preparing to present the talk on the topic of “Blessing=Fulfilling God’s Purpose of Creation and Restoration”, I became aware that my presentation assumed a basic understanding of Restoration that may not actually be present in the audience I was meeting on the evening of May 19, 2007. I believed that my talk was pretty straightforward about the personal aspect of Restoration – the restoration of the individual/ couple in relation to the Blessing. But I feel it is less straightforward in the aspect of the impact of the Blessing on the larger providence of Restoration. And so, the following presentation was developed in order to provide a sense of context to the individual process of restoration and should be given in tandem with the larger novelette written on this topic.

I would like to begin this talk with the following description of the Providence of Restoration and the Blessing. This quote is from Introduction to Restoration from Part II of the “Exposition of the Divine Principle:

The providence of restoration refers to God’s work to restore human beings to our original, unfallen state so that we may fulfill the purpose of creation. As discussed in Part I, human beings fell from the top of the growth stage and have been held under Satan’s dominion ever since. To restore human beings, God works to cut off Satan’s influence. Yet, as was explained in Christology, we must have the original sin removed before we can sever Satan’s bonds and be restored to the state before the Fall. This is possible only when we are born anew through the Messiah, the True Parents. To explain further: we first need to go through a

course to separate Satan from ourselves. We do this in order to restore ourselves in form to the spiritual level which Adam and Eve had reached before the Fall-the top of the growth stage. On this foundation, we are to receive the Messiah and be reborn, and thereby be fully restored to the original state of human beings before the Fall. Finally, by following the Messiah, we should continue our growth to maturity where we can fulfill the purpose of creation.

The key message that I take from this is that the Blessing, the process of being born anew through the True Parents, has significance to all humanity and the world as well as to each individual blessed couple . In a sense, each Blessed couple embodies on a Microcosmic level, the Macrocosmic process of Restoration. In that context, by fulfilling their Portion of Responsibility and establishing a successful blessing, blessed couples are also advancing the Providence of Restoration. To enhance this contribution, I believe, that it is helpful for all Blessed couple s to possess a conceptual, macroscopic understanding of the Providence of Restoration and the Blessing, thereby helping them to visualize that larger context that they fit within, as part of their daily course. It is with this motivation that I present the following.

The original process of growth envisioned by God and embodied in the Three Blessings can be diagramed showing the course of growth as a 4 stage tier – tier one is the Formation Stage of Spiritual Growth, tier two is the Growth Stage of Spiritual Growth, tier three is the Completion Stage of Spiritual Growth and tier four represents the accomplishment of perfection. The Principle has revealed that humanity’s fall occurred (Adam and Eve) at the top of the growth stage and thus all the territory up until that time fell under Satan’s dominion. The Providence of Restoration has been the excruciating and difficult process to regain spiritual growth, or the Formation and Growth levels of spiritual growth for humanity and has taken thousands of years. The goal of the Restoration Process has been to make a Foundation for the Messiah, who comes to restore Adam’s failure and to appear and be received by humanity so that he can inherit or bequeath that victory to all humanity. That bequeathing opportunity can only occur where the original fall of man occurred, or at the top of the Growth Stage. That bequeathing opportunity is the transitional or rebirth ceremony known as the Blessing.

The Blessing is, therefore, an absolutely pivotal and tremendous gift to humanity and crucial in the fulfillment and substantiation of God’s Will. It marks the transition from an unprincipled history and environment to a principled environment and future. The reality, however, is that the merit for this grace rests with God and the Messiah while the recipients of this grace are substantially and actually at various and different levels and stages of spiritual growth when they receive the Blessing and their subsequent process of spiritual advancement is also varied. Then there is the need of the offspring of these Blessed couple s to grow through the 3 stages of growth to reach perfection. So, it is my theory that the completion stage of spiritual growth is in reality a principled realm that embodies the three stages of growth. The process of perfection going on in that realm on earth must certainly embody those stages over a long period of time and through multiple generations – or the spectrum I referred to in my main paper. The ultimate goal is to transition all humanity out of the unprincipled formation and growth levels – empty out

that realm and let it atrophy and to replace it with the formation, growth and completion levels currently residing in the completion stage or the principled realm. In my main paper, I also pointed out that growth in the principled realm or the completion stage level of the three stages of growth, is further complicated because the citizens of that realm are also currently in the process of divesting themselves of personal, ancestral and collective sin (short of the sexual fall which sends the fallen individual back into the unprincipled realm). Individuals of the second, third generation and onward who reside in this principled realm need to be aware that it is crucial that they continue their citizenship in that realm and further the process of expanding this principled realm by also receiving The Blessing and keeping purity in their lineage. From this angle, the larger Restoration Aspect of the Blessing or how succeeding generations after the first generation Blessing contribute to it consists in their supporting the existing momentum through continual spiritual growth, receiving the Blessing, perfecting their Blessing and continuing the Blessing as well as by bringing others into the Blessing. It is a substantial manifestation of the current popular slogan – “Think globally but act locally”.

It think it is difficult for blessed members to sometimes see the importance of their position in the current fallen world because people of various spiritual levels co-exist and are mixed together, but in spiritual world the differences are extremely clear and well defined. And so I would like to clarify this perspective by explaining the difference between the unprincipled and principled spiritual realms. I will do this through utilizing sections from the book True Family Values (co-written by Pak and Wilson) referenced in the above question is an account or tour of the Spirit World by Dr. San Hun Lee from the publication “Theory of the Spirit World in Unification Thought,” as published in the Unification Thought Quarterly 33 (summer 1995), pp. 28-36.

To summarize to Dr. Lee’s account, the spirit world consists of a Principled Realm and a non-Principled spirit world. Further, Rev. Lee identifies specific/major realms in the Un- Principled Spirit World, a delineation that makes sense in light of the Providence of Resurrection explained in the 5th Chapter of the Divine Principle – Resurrection. According to section 2.1,pp138-140, since a person was originally meant to reach perfection by going through 3 major stages – Formation, Growth and Perfection, the providence and un-principled spirit world realms related to Resurrection mimic that pattern:

“Fourth, according to the Principle of Creation, a person is meant to reach perfection through the three ordered stages of the growing period. Therefore, the providence of resurrection for fallen people is also to be completed through three ordered stages, manifested as three ages in the providence of restoration…The Providence to Lay the Foundation for Resurrection; The Providence of Formation-Stage Resurrection; The Providence of Growth-Stage Resurrection; The Providence of Completion-Stage Resurrection; The Kingdom of Heaven.”

Rev. Lee identifies the following realms in the Unprincipled Spirit World: Transitional Spirit World, Hell (consisting of level 1, 2 and 3), Lower Heaven (comparable to the Formation Stage of Resurrection) and Paradise (also consisting of a lower, middle and

upper level and comparable to the Growth Stage of Resurrection). He also specifies that the realm called the Principled Spirit World contains peripheral regions and levels (since principled spirits may have transitioned at various stages of spiritual growth) with a central sphere called the Kingdom of God. In the non-Principled spirit world - the Transitional Spirit World is just that, the realm that most spirit persons enter and stay temporarily after their death, kind of a transfer point. One exception to this process would be those individuals, being ignorant that they have died, that wander about on the earth, as ghosts, possessing people or locations. Eventually, however, these entities must and do proceed to the Transitional Spirit World. The stay in that realm, according to Dr. Lee, can last from a few days to a few years, and concludes by a review of the spirit’s life on earth called “mirror of judgment”. After this time of a life’s review, each spirit person chooses to journey downward into Hell or upward into the Lower Heaven, or Paradise. Those spirits that can bypass the Transitional Spirit World and enter the Principled Realms based on their having received the Blessing, also choose of which part or region of that realm they will dwell in. It seems that the choice to reside in one of the realms and in what part of that realm is entirely a choice made by each spirit person on the basis of where they fit and thus feel most comfortable, with those of similar spiritual levels thus being grouped together.

Though all realms share the basic characteristics of the spiritual world (an eternal, incorporeal, substantial world, less limited by time and space than the corporeal world), the appearance of the geography and activities that occur in each realm is defined/limited by the quality of spiritual growth & level of resurrection characteristic of each realm. As the beginning paragraph points out, the current structure of the Spirit World is very much affected by both the Fall and the Providence of Resurrection, reflecting both the original ideal of God as well as the need to accommodate the reality of the fallen world. The Fall, because had been no Fall there would not be an Unprincipled Spirit World or hell, and Resurrection, because the process of humanity’s development is currently one of reversal or divestment of sin coupled with spiritual advancement toward the original ideal. In fact, a Spirit World partnered with an ideal world might have no or at least very small realms corresponding to the 3 stages preceding Perfection since these stage were, in large part, suppose to be completed during an individual’s earthly life. Further, a spirit person, currently in the midst of a process of Restoration, comes under the governances of the Spirit World that require a spirit being to demonstrate diminishing quantity of sin and increasing quality of spiritual growth towards the Ideal in order to make any upward movement or advancement between and within the major realms. The process of Resurrection is described in Chapter 5, section 1.3, pg 136:

“Resurrection may be defined as the process of being restored from the death caused by the Fall to life, from the realm of Satan’s dominion to the realm of God’s direct dominion, through the providence of restoration. Accordingly, whenever we repent of our sins and rise to a higher state of goodness, we are resurrected to that degree.”

The dividing point between the Unprincipled and Principled Spirit World is described as the top of the growth stage (currently known as Paradise) as, on earth, this was the point where the Fall occurred (as referenced to in Chapter 5, Section 2.2.6 and in Part II) and

what is bound on earth is bound in Heaven (Matt. 18:18). Passage beyond that point requires that the Individual be divested of Original Sin through the Blessing as sin has no place in God’s original Principle, Ideal or purpose for this creation

To define the characteristics of wrong behavior, I looked at the Divine Principle, Rev. Lee’s text and a speech by Rev. Moon. In the Divine Principle, the chapter on the Fall of Man certainly identifies the root of Sin as first being an illicit sexual act between Lucifer and Eve and then an unauthorized, horizontally initiated, premature and tainted (by fallen nature) sexual act between Eve and Adam. Further, it identifies key motivational components on the part of Lucifer, stemming from his desire to be loved and ability to compare/contrast, of envy, jealousy and unrighteous desire that were not contained/controlled because he could not comprehend himself of God’s standpoint. This failure to see his situation from God’s point of view removed any roadblocks or hindrances to putting himself in a situation and to acting in such a manner that the power of love could grow and develop until it finally compelled him to substantially manifest his confusion. Another way to state this would be that Lucifer became so self-focused that he justified his feelings and eventually allowed those actions in the realm of love that led to the fall. Thus it is that selfishness can be seen as the pivotal orientation that led to the fall. This is the message I found in the Rev. Moon’s speech, “The Necessity for the Day of Victory of Love” given on January 15, 1984 in Tarrytown, NY:

What is God doing about this? God must be working for restoration, trying to create a turning point to pull this nation from its current situation and move it toward His ideal. The fundamental block is man’s relationship with Satan; unless we can resolve this, no other problems of society can be permanently solved. The basic relationship between people and Satan rests on the illicit love relationship – self-centered love. Such immoral love always shatters people and separates them from any ideal. The love of God is exactly the opposite; it is pure, it creates unity, and it uplifts people and allows them to transcend selfishness. Love is the key element over which Satan and God have been struggling….When people live with satanic, self-centered love here on earth, can they possibly go to spirit world with the capacity to love God? Self-centered individuals have created a spirit world full of division and disintegration. The original spirit world is one of genuine, altruistic love; thus the elements of selfish love found on earth are foreign to the spirit world. This earth has produced such an unmanageable product and has sent it up to spirit world. Now the spirit world is a mess, divided into multitudes of compartments each trying to repel anything which differs from it.

The following section from Rev. Lee continues in this same trend:

Hell is populated by people who lived predominantly self-centered lives while on earth. On earth they pursued only their own interests while committing falsehoods, deceptions, injustice, robbery, murder and rape. Even if outwardly they led respectable lives, their hearts festered with jealousy, hatred, avarice, lust, anger and complaint. After they pass over into the transitional spirit world, fellow spirits of hell who witness the newcomer’s past in the mirror of judgment lead

him to hell. Hell is subdivided into three levels. All of them are dark, stinking, clammy and dismal. They are distinguished according to the severity and persistence of the evil committed by their denizens.”

The definition of right behavior seems to be most fully contained in the concept of altruistic and God reflective love and is epitomized in the life of an individual that correctly and substantially fulfilled his/her responsibility, connects to and reflects the full love of God. The Divine Principle describes this pivotal element in Chapter 5, Section 1.2, page 136:

It is written, ‘we know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren. He who does not love remains in death.’ Love here means the love of God. A person who does not love his neighbors with God’s love is dead, even though he remains active and alive on earth.” Also in Chapter 1, section 5.2.3 (describing the realm of direct dominion), page 44

What is the meaning of God’s direct dominion over human beings? Once Adam and Eve had perfected themselves as individuals centered on God, they were to live together as one, forming the four position foundation in their family. Living in oneness with God’s Heart, they would have led a life of goodness, sharing the fullness of love and beauty with Adam as the head of the family. In the realm of God’s direct dominion, people will intensely experience God’s Heart within themselves. Hence, they will know His Will and carry it out in their actions. Just as every part of the body spontaneously moves in response to the subtle directions of the mind, people will spontaneously carry out the Will of God in accord with the deeply felt intentions of His Heart.

Dr. Lee describes the type of spirits that dwell in the formation stage and growth stage realms in terms of how they manifested love in their earthly lives:

The Lower Heaven: Conscientious people, the charitable, patriots, educators, the virtuous, truth-seekers, etc. Who made efforts to do right while on earth, dwell in the lower heaven. Whether or not they believed in religion, they sought to live a life of goodness according to their conscience. Their goodness was sincere and not for show or self-promotion……Paradise: Those who dedicated themselves to a life of goodness while on earth dwell in the lowest level of paradise. Many good Christians reside here, as well as many non-Christians of comparable goodness, truthfulness and compassion…Seekers and righteous non-believers also, who placed dedication to the truth and right above worldly affairs, can attain this high level of spirituality and merit paradise…People of advanced spirituality and love dwell in the middle level of paradise. They lived for the sake of humanity and practiced sacrificial love, even forgiving their enemies….the love these saints expressed on earth, though mature, did not reach beyond the fraternal realm of heart. Love of neighbor, love of humanity and loving one’s enemy are all extensions of brotherly love…None practiced or taught the perfection of love in the family, which requires completing the Four Great Realms of Heart…Jesus

alone dwells in the upper level of paradise, ruling the entire spirit world with the love of God.

So it would seem that the key morality that distinguishes a resident of Hell, the Form Spirit Level and Paradise is the direction and degree of their actions, especially in the realm of heart and love, or whether they pursued their own purpose in life and love (which because it was for self-benefit, actually undermines the meaning of love which is other oriented) or God’s Purpose (which ultimately is the definition of Love since God, who is Love, is totally other oriented). The value of identifying this morality is great because this knowledge can be used to proactively evaluate current or future actions/options for their potential effect on one’s spiritual growth/advancement. For example, one could look at a targeted behavior/life choice and ask if this is for one’s own purpose or for God’s purpose. Depending on the honest answer rooted in an honest desire to grow to ones fullest potential, such behavior/life choice could be modified, stopped or continued/improved upon. In sync with this, I utilize the following mantra as a way to decide upon a course of action – among the many that may be offered to me – “What is the most whole purpose option” and then decide/act accordingly. This approach is well summed up in the Divine Principle, Chapter 2, Section 4.3 (Good and Evil seen from the viewpoint of Purpose), page 69-70:

Having already defined good and evil, let us further examine the nature of good and evil from the viewpoint of purpose. Had Adam and Eve loved each other as God intended and formed a four position foundation centered on God, they would have established a good world. But when they loved each other with a purpose contrary to God’s intentions and established a four position foundation centered on Satan, they ended up forming an evil world. This demonstrates that although good and evil elements or actions may take the same form, their true nature may be discerned through their fruits. They yield their fruits in accordance with the divergent purposes they pursue.

I would like to approach this question from one additional angle. That is to look at an additional distinction between spirits dwelling in the various realms of spirit world – the distinction of the type and quality of heart relationship with God. This characteristic, though not specifically a moral one, is nonetheless quite paramount in distinguishing the “fit” of a spirit person for any of the realms of Spirit World. The Divine Principle links a formation stage spirit with the heart focus of belief and practice of the law or works and the type of heart maturity that emanates from this orientation. It further identifies the heart focus of justification by faith in God’s central person and holy words as the pivotal attitude to allow for growth stage resurrection and residence in Paradise. So a form spirit would be justified by what they do in the service of God and a Life Spirit would be justified by their attitude of faith – though this is still couched in a childlike focus/response to the vertical point and extending to fraternal concern and love. I will reference this approach from Chapter 5, Sections 2.2.1-3, pages 139-140:

During the two thousand years from Abraham to Jesus, God worked to raise people to the formation stage of resurrection. Hence, this era may be called the

age of the providence of formation-stage resurrection. All people who lived on earth during this age could receive the merit of the age based on God’s work of formation-stage resurrection. In this era, God gave the Law of the Old Testament. By believing in and practicing it, the people could fulfill their responsibility and be justified before God. Therefore, this era has been called the age of justification by works. The people of this era who practiced the Law in their daily life were resurrected in spirit to the formation stage and became form spirits. Upon their death, those who achieved the level of form spirits while on earth entered and abided in the form-spirit world…Due to the crucifixion of Jesus, resurrection was left incomplete, and its completion has been delayed until the time of his return. The two thousand years since then have been a time of prolongation, during which God has worked the providence to resurrect people to the growth stage through spiritual salvation. Hence, this era may be called the age of the providence of growth-stage resurrection. All who have lived in this age can receive the merit of the age based on God’s work of growth-stage resurrection. In this era, people are to believe in the New Testament Word, which God gave them that they might fulfill their responsibility for the providence and be justified before God. Therefore, this era has been called the age of justification by faith. Those who have lived in this era could be resurrected in spirit by believing in the Gospel during their earthly life. By being resurrected to the growth stage, they could become life spirits. Upon their death, those who became life spirits while on earth enter and abide in Paradise, the life-spirit level of the spirit world.

Dr. Lee supports this perspective in the following account (Chapter5, pages 153-155):

From the standpoint of the Divine Principle, the inhabitants of the lower heaven are form spirits, having grown to the formation stage in their spiritual life. Their inner goodness and level of heart is comparable to that of the good people of the Old Testament Age, the age of justification by deeds. Spirit people who lived in the Old Testament Age dwell in this heaven, now joined by countless others of every culture and faith…In this realm are many inventors, scientists, artist, and musicians who work cooperatively for the benefit of the earth. They design and create things out of spiritual substance which will one day become the inspiration for inventors, scientists and artists in the physical world. Earthly people invariably conceive new creations and inventions which have already been made in the spirit world…Those who dedicated themselves to a life of goodness while on earth dwell in the lowest level of paradise. Many good Christians reside here, as well as many non-Christians of comparable goodness, truthfulness and compassion. From the perspective of the Divine Principle, these are the good people of the New Testament Age, the age of justification by faith, joined by countless others who have attained a similar spiritual level. Just as the devout Christian live by faith in Jesus Christ, there are believers of every religion who devote themselves to God with comparable sincerity, though they call Him by other names, including Allah, Krishna, Buddha, the Essential Self or the Unmanifest Source. Seekers and righteous non-believers also, who place dedication to the truth and right above worldly affairs, can attain this high level of spirituality and merit paradise. The

inhabitants of paradise are all life spirits…People of advanced spirituality and love dwell in the middle level of paradise. They lived for the sake of humanity and practiced sacrificial love, even forgiving their enemies. The Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, and all the founders of religions except for Jesus Christ dwell in this realm. Each taught in his own way about the same divine Source of love and manifested Him in his person. The saints who took up their missions and imitated their examples also dwell in this realm…The love these saints expressed on earth, though mature, did not reach beyond the fraternal realm of heart…Even Confucius, though he taught the ethics of the family, gave excessive emphasis to the duty children owe their parents and did not clearly explain about the downward love of parents for children. None practiced or taught the perfection of love in the family, which requires completing the Four Great Realms of Heart. From the perspective of the Divine Principle, their love does not surpass the level of Adam and Eve prior to the Fall, while they were still growing towards maturity, marriage and becoming true parents… Jesus alone dwells in the upper level of paradise, ruling the entire spirit world with the love of God…AS the unique Son of God, Jesus stands in a class by himself, even though while on earth he taught a level of brotherly love no different from the founders of other religions. Nevertheless, because he did not establish a family Four Position Foundation, Jesus does not dwell in the Kingdom of God, which is reserved for true families only.

It is important to point out that though the re-establishment of the level of Form Spirit Resurrection and Life Spirit Resurrection was initially linked to Judaism and Christianity, it is now open to followers of all sincere religions or seekers of God based on the principle of the merit of the age. Essentially, the merit of the ages allows victories and accomplishments, either in the realm of technology or spiritual advancements, to be accessed by subsequent generations. This same phenomena currently allows individuals with a wide variety of spiritual growth levels to exist concurrently. A description of this dynamic can be found in Chapter 5 of the Divine Principle, section 2.1, page 138:

First, in the history of the providence of resurrection, many of those who were entrusted with a mission exerted themselves with utmost sincerity and faith to realize the Will of Heaven. Even though they may not have fully carried out their responsibilities, based on their devotion, they broadened the foundation upon which subsequent generations can form a relationship of heart with God. We call this foundation the merit of the age in the providence of restoration. The merit of the age has increased in proportion to the foundation of heart laid by the prophets, sages and righteous people who came before us. Therefore, resurrection is carried out based on the merit of the age.

Let’s now turn to a fuller picture of the Completion Realm, part of the Principled Realm; I would like to also introduce Dr. Lee perspective, as contained in Chapter 5 of the book “True Family Values”, Joong Hyun Pak and Andrew Wilson. The following commentary is found in the section talking about the Principled Spirit World that encompasses the Completion Stage and Perfection Stage realms. Again, Spirit beings are able to enter into

the Completion Stage realm only if they have passed over the barrier at the top of the Growth Stage that was erected after the Fall:

Although a single realm, the Principled spirit world nevertheless divides into regions according to the love attained by the families who dwell there. Spirit persons who could cultivate only a relatively small love dwell in the lower regions; those whose love is greater dwell in higher regions; and those whose love is greatest dwell in the highest region. Furthermore, even within the same region there exists a distinction between center and periphery. Families who took on central responsibility for the providence on earth are placed in more central positions, and families who took on lesser missions on earth dwell in relatively outer positions…Most dwell in a newly-opened realm between the Kingdom of God and paradise called the threshold level. The threshold level is the temporary dwelling-place of people who passed on while still in the process of completing the Four Position Foundation…Because people who have received the Blessing belong to the Principled world, they enter the Kingdom of God or the threshold level directly without having to pass through the transitional spirit world. In fact, some people in the threshold level, had they not received the Blessing, would not be qualified to enter even the lower heaven. This alone shows how great is the value of the Blessing.

In examining the Divine Principle I found two allegorical systems that describe spirit/character resurrection utilized and perhaps from the blending of these two, a clearer picture of the process of spiritual and heart resurrection can be gleaned. Now both can be understood from a heartistic/internal and behavioral perspective though I believe that the internal attitude approach is the most significant. The first system is found in the Chapter on Resurrection (Chapter 5), Section 2.2.1-2.2.4 – pages 139 through 140. This system equates the Formation Stage Resurrection with the doing of good works as a means of justifying an individual’s relationship with God. Especially people who practiced the Law in their daily life were able to be resurrection to the level of a Form Spirit. The Growth Stage Resurrection is dependent upon growth due to the merit of the age based on God’s Work and those chosen central figures – especially his son Jesus. Resurrection accomplished in this era was gained through belief or faith in the New Testament Word and the living Word – Jesus and resulted in spirits becoming Life Spirits. Life Spirits are often described as being able to reflect the light of their subject but not able to emanate or generate that light on their own – thus this is very much an objective position internally and externally. The Completion Stage Resurrection is one where people are to be resurrected internally and externally through Christ at His Second Coming. These individuals are to be resurrected based on their believing in the Completed Testament Truth and also upon their service and attendance of the Lord so this era brings resurrection to a Divine Spirit level based upon attendance.

The second system is found in Part II of the Divine Principle, Chapter 2 (Moses and Jesus in the Providence of Restoration), section 3.3.2 – pages 283-285. This system compares the resurrection of humanity’s relationship of heart to God with the types of heartistic qualities found in servants, adopted children and true children of a Master:

The deepest explanation of God’s purpose of creation is revealed in terms of relationships of heart. As our invisible, internal Parent, God created human beings as His substantial children. Adam and Eve were created in the image of God, as the substantial object partners to God in the pattern of His dual characteristics. As God’s first substantial object partners, they were meant to be the Parents of humankind. They were meant to become husband and wife, bear and raise children, and form a family intertwining the heart of parents, the heart of husband and wife, the heart of brothers and sisters, and the heart of children (my comment, whoa – here it is, the 4 Great Realms of Heart!). Their family would have manifested the true love of parents, the true love of husband and wife, and the true love of children. This would have been the four position foundation which realizes the three object purpose. In this manner, God intended to build the Kingdom of Heaven on earth through His own children, born of His heavenly lineage…The primary significance of the Fall was that the first human ancestors formed a bond of blood ties with the Archangel; therefore, all of humanity has been bound to Satan’s lineage. Every human being has been born as a child of the Devil. The first human ancestors fell to the position where they no longer had any connection to God’s lineage. Accordingly, the ultimate purpose of God’s providence of restoration is to transform fallen people, who have no connection to God’s lineage, into children born of God’s direct lineage…At Noah’s time, a direct relationship with God could not be restored due to the mistake of his second son, Ham. Nevertheless, because Noah had demonstrated utmost devotion, his family could stand in an indirect relationship with God, as a servant of servants…Abraham, the father of faith, with his family established the family foundation for the Messiah. They and their descendants, God’s chosen people, were elevated to the position of God’s servants…In the days of Jesus, the disciples, who stood upon the foundation of faith Jesus had laid from the position of John the Baptist, were elevated from the position of servants to the position of adopted children. To rise further from this state and become the children of God’s direct lineage, they should have first established the foundation of substance and the foundation for the Messiah by serving and obeying Jesus absolutely…Christians are, at best God’s adopted children, because they do not stem from His lineage. This explains why St. Paul lamented, ‘we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons.’…Christ will return and restore all humanity to be God’s true children…the returning Christ will conduct the dispensation to start based on the Word and then complete the foundation for the Messiah both spiritually and physically. Upon that foundation, he will engraft all humanity with himself, cleansing them of the original sin and restoring them to be God’s children, born of His lineage.

The blending of these two systems creates an imagery of the form spirit level being focused on doing good deeds and works but with a distant relationship of heart with God – that of a servant of servants or a servant. In such a relationship – God and anyone in a parental position is seen as all-powerful, distant, awe-inspiring, mysterious, fear invoking and whose every word must be obeyed, often without question or understanding of the

heart behind the request. Also, the faithful individual feels that if they just act correctly and in accordance with God’s Words, they will be accepted and loved – that they are justified by their correct and good deeds and accomplishments. An example of this kind of relationship is found in the response of the servant who was given one talent – from the Bible, Book of Matthew, in the parable of the talents – Chapter 25, verses 14-30:

For it will be as when a man going on a journey called his servants and entrusted to them his property; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents, went at once, and traded with them; and he made five talents more. So also, he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money. Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them…He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not winnow; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed, and gather where I have not winnowed? They you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming, I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.

Moving onto the relationship of heart towards God by one in the growth spirit level, we would find such a person would possess what was referred to in the Divine Principle as the heart of adopted son-ship. In such a relationship, God and anyone in a parental position is still seen as an all-powerful and absolutely central Being and the faithful individual is fixated upon God with an absolute sense of love and longing. This is absolutely a vertical relationship and the individual responds to God’s love with something akin to the heart of young child has for their parent who is much beloved but still not understood. Also, to a child, the parent is all-powerful and can control the universe, everything that is needed is to be received from the parent but this relationship is not reciprocal – ie, the child usually doesn’t think of how they can help the parent. There exists a strong expression of gratitude for the unexpected/undeserved grace and acceptance received from God. This faithful individual knows that no amount of action is responsible for the love God is showering upon him or her and responds with the only offering they can make, that of faithfulness, gratitude and love. There also exists awareness that their origin and history is one separate from their current relationship with God. Bring into the mix an expansion of this vertical give and take to the fraternal reality based on love and concern and you pretty much have the mind and heartset of a faithful adopted son/daughter.

The final imagery presented is that of a true child of God and this relationship is able to mature to the level of an adult son or daughter who eventually becomes a parent in his or

her own right. The beauty of this relationship is in the heartistic closeness and sense of belonging to God coupled with a fierce loyalty and commitment to co-participation in the work/goals/enterprises/purposes of their Parent. Such a faithful son or daughter’s actions, service and attendance is rooted in his or her internal connection to the Parent and is driven by a deep desire to anticipate and fulfill and further every need or concern of that Parent. They understand and embody the heart of God– especially towards the extended family and other children and inherit God’s attributes and love.

With the preceding imagery in hand, we are now able to address the given question of how the directions to have absolute faith, love and obedience illuminate the meaning of attendance. The imagery found in the preceding paragraph of a true son or daughter of God epitomizes the absolute and therefore perfection level of each of these directives as well as a total disconnection from Satanic and self-absorbed elements. Attach the word absolute to these directives defines the absolute/perfect/pure expression of these same directives and illuminates or clarifies the meaning of attendance. Also, attendance must be accomplished and achieved by all sons or daughters of God before they can truly fulfill the Completion Stage of Resurrection and rightfully move onto and dwell in the Perfection Level/Realm known as the Kingdom of God.

To conclude this section, the principled realm on this physical plane (the completion stage) is then transferred into a principled realm in the spiritual world. Only blessed individuals and families can dwell there but the level of their spiritual growth and heartistic development determines the place of their residence in this realm. This realm can be diagramed by drawing concentric circles with the core circle being the place of God’s fullest residence or the Kingdom of God/Kingdom of Heaven in Heaven. We gain entrance into this realm through and because of the Blessing but growth in that realm is totally our responsibility. Of course, I do understand that eventually all humanity will be able to gain access to the realm of the Kingdom of God through utilizing the principles of returning resurrection and because God Heart will not be satisfied until all of His Children are saved. But, we should all hasten that day as quickly as possible and not allow our Heavenly Parent nor any of his children to suffer any longer than necessary.

Appendix H Alice Fleisher Denver, CO 2007

Additional thoughts on the topic of “The Blessing = Fulfilling God’s Purpose of Creation and Restoration”

The crowning task that is the responsibility of Blessed Couples in the Principled Realm (remember that this is a realm of couples and families) is to pioneer the fulfillment of the Second Blessing. Just as the fulfillment of the First Blessing must go through 3 stages, I believe that this task will also be fulfilled through a process and will take time. The partners in the couple start off as two disunited individuals and must get to the goal of the ideal unity as modeled in the visual image of God in the Yin Yang symbol. In that symbol, the dual characteristics of God are still distinct but they are also beautifully and fully united and form a rounded/whole and complete entity/Being that is greater than the sum of the parts. This journey must also take time and is a process that we, as Blessed Couples are pioneering. We fortunately have the model of Our True Parents to follow and guide us, but we must find the way to customize this process to our unique couple.

Please understand this in the greater context of the limitations /baggage that our imperfection and remnants of sin bring to the mix. This then means that in addition to learning how to and working on perfecting our couple and family, we must continue to strive for individual perfection and to cleanse all traces of sin in the world.

Even given this very difficult job (this is a grace from God, not a curse, and mimics the process of Restoration which is progressive and moving towards the ideal from a horrific reality due to the fall) let us think what we can do to pioneer the perfection of our second blessing. I certainly think that we should spend time working on this task as a couple and also as a community of faith. This is especially true since victories in this process can benefit not only the individual couple but also establish merit of the age. In this regard, it is not only a benefit for the couple or a practice of the couple’s devotion but also a contribution to the process of Restoration.

The following are some suggestions:

Study the existing marriage ministries and marriage education/enrichment programs that have been inspired by God to expand our knowledge and education in this task. Just a word of advice regarding the material that is being developed from the marriage movement; this must always be viewed in the greater context of the Divine Principle and Father’s words. If utilized in this context, then the material is very helpful and useful.

Read the Words of our True Parents about the Blessing, Ideal Family Life, Parenting, etc. I expect that in the coming years efforts will be made to systematize the contents of our True Parent’s teachings on the Blessings. When curriculums and educational systems along those lines emerge, they should also be the focus of study. A pioneering website concerned with this type of educational resources is bcf-ed.org, and it, and others of its kind, should also be utilized.

Study and pray focused on the Family Pledge – this is a God inspired text that very clearly sets the standard and goals that we should strive to attain as a Blessed Family.

Spend time, on a regular basis, on this task – you have to work at it – but please work smart as well as hard. The deal is that we Adamic/Eveic beings are designed to initially accomplish the Three Blessings while on the corporal plane. The process, then, is designed to be accomplished while we are entrenched and acting (imbued with spirituality and Love) in the realm of time and place. Of course, after the first Blessing is accomplished, the 2nd Blessing could be carried out in the spiritual world without the need for returning resurrection – the one limit here is the begetting of biological children. I believe, however, the best way is for many years of family time together and also in service to the greater society, nation and world prior to continuing the Blessing in Spirit World.

I would suggest that there be opportunities provided on a monthly basis to the Church community to encourage and support this devotional practice – an opportunity for our community of faith to benefit from and be exposed to the many available resources concerned with the accomplishment of successful marriages and families. These should be really joy filled fellowships – a time for culture building and wisdom learning. It would be helpful to utilize these meetings to focus on supporting our members in gaining skills for establishing and developing successful relationships. The value of such meetings would also be to provide a community of support and encouragement to our community of faith. A third value of such a meeting would be to function as gentle reminder to each couple of their responsibility to invest/work on this area of their life (help in building up a habit of working on their Second Blessing). Now, these meetings will not solve the problems being experienced by our Blessed Couples as this is ultimately their responsibility, but they should encourage healthy growth and help in providing the necessary tools for the task. You might think of them as providing pro- active, preventative medicine as well as encouraging healthy marriage practices. More difficult problems will surely require specialized help and a counseling ministry should focus on this need and arena.

Appendix I Alice Fleisher Denver, CO 2008

THE MEANING OF PURITY

The Divine Principle clearly explains that the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, that object of desire that upon being eaten caused the fall of mankind, was the sexual love of Eve and further explains that the root of sin was a misuse of this sexual love: (from Chapter 2 of the Divine Principle, Section 1.4 & 1.5, page 60-61:

What does the fruit of this tree represent? It signifies the love of Eve…What did eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil signify? When we eat something, we make it a part of ourselves. Eve was to have eaten the fruit of goodness by consummating her God-centered love…However, she ate of the fruit of evil by consummating her evil love centered on Satan…Accordingly, Eve’s eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil denotes that she consummated a satanic love relationship with the angel which bound her in blood ties to him…We have learned from the above elucidation of the Bible that the root of sin was not that the first human ancestors ate a fruit, but rather that they had an illicit sexual relationship with an angel (symbolized by a serpent).”

It was to protect them from misusing love and to enable them to maintain a life of absolute sexuality morality, that God gave Adam and Eve a Commandment. The Bible verse that contains this commandment is found in the following Bible verse, from the Book of Genesis, Chapter 3: 2-3, we read:

And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.

This commandment was given to Adam and Eve to prevent them from activating horizontal, sexual love outside its principled, intended boundaries and framework; and also to prevent their committing a heinous sexual mistake and activating evil, self- centered love, as happened between Lucifer and Eve and then Eve and Adam. I am aware that there are many expressions of sinfulness and unprincipled behavior that are prevalent in this fallen world, but this paper will focus on sinfulness and unprincipled behavior related to the misuse of love because it is the root of all collective, ancestral, personal and ultimately the original sin and resultant fallen nature. The reader may find that the restoration formula suggested within this paper can be applied and utilized in overcoming many addictive and unprincipled behaviors and I would suggest they do so. The scope of this paper, though, is necessarily focused on problems related to the misuse of love and an assessment of purity that includes character and spiritual-self maturation accomplished according to Heavenly Laws and mandates related to love and righteousness as well as disciplined and controlled sexual practices. I will approach the issue of purity by combining/blending my focus on two crucial aspects as played out in human relationships

and society. The first is to emphasize the ideal model of purity grounded on spiritual growth and Heavenly order and laws. The second is to examine aspects of the misuse of love which undermine purity including premature relationships, unprincipled relationships and fallen and evil relationships grounded on self-centered self-firstness and the four fallen natures (not seeing from God’s point of view, leaving proper position, reversal of dominion and multiplication of evil).

From words from our True Father, we can understand that living a life of spiritual and sexual purity is a crucial requirement and absolute foundation that must be maintained before the goal of fulfilling the three Blessings and creating an ideal family and ultimately the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth and in the Spirit World can to be accomplished. (From Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s speech given at the Forty-seventh True Children’s Day, November 21, 2006):

Ladies and gentlemen, it was necessary for Adam and Eve to establish a model ideal family of peace. God, the absolute being, created human beings as His children in order to instill in them absolute values on the basis of an absolute standard. Thus, human beings must follow the way of that absolute standard in keeping with the demands of the heavenly path. This means we must follow our destined life course in order to attend God, the absolute being, as our Parent. In other words, for people to perfect themselves in resemblance of God and obtain the stature of people of character who can be called sons and daughters of the absolute being, they must follow the path based on the absolute standard God has determined. The essence of this path is the standard of absolute sexual purity.

The first stage is maintaining absolute sexual purity prior to getting married. After we are born, we go through a process of growth. We pass through infancy and childhood in a very safe and secure environment embraced in our parents’ love and protection. We then enter the time of adolescence, which signals the start of a new and dynamic life as we forge relationships on a totally new level with those around us, as well as with all things of creation. This is the moment when we begin to travel the path to becoming an absolute human being—internally, through the perfection of our character, and externally, by reaching adulthood. Yet, at this time there is an absolute requirement that people must fulfill, no matter who they are. This is the requirement of maintaining their purity, which is the model of absolute sexual morality for human beings. God gave it to His children as their destined responsibility and duty, to be carried out in order to fulfill the ideal of creation. This heavenly path is thus the way toward perfecting the model of absoluteness in conjugal love. What was the single word, the one and only commandment God gave to Adam and Eve, the first ancestors, upon their creation? It was the commandment and blessing to maintain an absolute standard of sexual purity until God’s approval of their marriage. We find the basis for this in the Bible passage that indicates that Adam and Eve would surely die on the day they ate of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. If they had refrained from eating and observed Heaven’s commandment, they would have perfected their character and, as co-creators, stood with God, the Creator, as His

equals. Furthermore, they would have taken dominion over the creation and become the lords of the universe enjoying eternal and ideal happiness.

It was God’s blessing that He told them to preserve their purity so that they could wed as His true children through His Marriage Blessing, become true husband and wife, become true parents and give birth to true children. This knowledge deepens our understanding of this commandment. It is connected with the principle of absoluteness in conjugal love, which is a principle of God’s creation. The profound truth within God’s commandment has lain hidden throughout history: human beings must inherit and live by a model absolute sexual purity that is intrinsic to God’s ideal for creation. This is so that they might perfect their individuality as God’s children and establish themselves as lords of creation.

Second is the model of absoluteness in the love of husband and wife. More precious than life itself, this is the heavenly law of absolute fidelity. Husband and wife are eternal partners given to each other by Heaven. Through having children, they become the co-creators of true love, true life and true lineage, and the origin of that which is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal. This is because it is a heavenly principle that one person cannot give birth to a child by him- or herself, even in a thousand years. How can people who preserve their purity before marriage, and whom God binds together in a pure marriage as husband and wife, deviate from the way of Heaven and go astray, following a wrong path? We human beings are different from animals; if they understand God’s purpose in creating them as His children, they will realize that the wrong path is one of unimaginable betrayal and defiance of the Creator; it is a path of self-destruction along which they dig their own graves. Resulting from the human Fall, this path falls outside the realm of the ideal of creation.

Ladies and gentlemen, the absoluteness of conjugal love is the greatest blessing that Heaven has bestowed on humankind. Without adhering to the principle of absolute sexual purity, the path to the perfection of one’s character and spiritual maturity is closed. Furthermore, without securing the foundation of absolute sexual morality within a true family of perfected individuals, it is it is impossible for God to manifest with dignity as the incarnate God of character. In order for God, the absolute being, to have direct dominion over our lives and to live and share joy with us, we who were created as His object partners and children must assume the form of a perfected family based on the standard of absolute sexual ethics, as God intended. Only within the boundaries of a family upholding absolute sexual morality is it possible to create relationships based on an ideal model of sexual ethics for life as it should originally have existed. This life includes the three-generational realm of grandparents, parents, children and grandchildren. Please understand clearly that God’s eternal life and a person’s eternal life are possible only on this foundation.

Therefore, if Adam and Eve had achieved individual perfection—the perfection of character—by upholding the principles of absolute sexual purity, in accordance

with God’s will, and then entered into conjugal relations through His Blessing, they would have attained complete oneness with Him. God would have dwelt within their union. Their children also would have been linked to this holy order of love, enjoying a direct relationship with God as their parent. In other words, the marriage of the perfected Adam and Eve based on absolute purity in conjugal love, would have been God’s own marriage. God is forever God, but at the same time Adam and Eve were to have become His incarnations. They would have become God’s body. God would have settled inside their minds and hearts to become the True Parent of humankind in both the spiritual and physical worlds, on the foundation of absoluteness in conjugal love.

From the perspective of the Principle of Creation, the advice against multiple horizontal and what often turns into exclusive friendships with someone of the opposite sex is important. From True Father’s 2006 speech on “The Family Rooted in Absolute Sexual Ethics” we can understand that the marriage Blessing relationship is totally exclusive and is the place where deep, eternal and strong sexual, emotional, intellectual and heartistic horizontal bonding occurs within the couple. Your spouse should be your best friend, your parent, your lover, your child and your true brother/sister. This unique horizontal and monogamous relationship, which characterizes a Blessed couple, is the only relationship of its kind which is allowed, approved and receives God’s Blessing. This does not preclude altruistic outpourings from Blessed couples whereby they serve and care for humankind, their brothers and sisters under God and True Parents. However, the internal realm, dynamic and domain of the Blessed couple is private, protected and necessarily exclusive. We also should, however, understand that, until that permission is given, a close, one-on-one emotional connection, including friendships, between any man and woman is not allowed. The Divine Principle clearly teaches about the period of growth, called the three stages of growth, which must be passed through on the path to spiritual perfection. During that time of growth and until permission is given by God to enter into a Blessed couple hood, close, one-on-one friendships or exclusive relationships would be premature, in relationship to one’s future spouse, and never, ever allowed to be duplicated or entered into with any other.

Prior to the establishment of such a precious relationship within their Blessed couple, what should every person be concerned with? Why, with the determined and focused effort to fulfill the first blessing; thus with all of our hearts, minds and souls we must make heroic efforts to become mature sons and daughters of God by controlling our bodies with our original minds and becoming truly mature, responsible, loving individuals who are one with Him and embody God’s Heart. So, in the time period after puberty and before our marriage Blessing, we are not allowed according to Heavenly Law, to establish horizontal, emotional and intellectual relationships and friendships with the opposite sex, EVER. Instead, we need to prepare ourselves for that future exclusivity by focusing on God and waiting for His permission. Knowledge of this behavior and law is already imprinted upon our original mind and we need to be clear about the ideal model of behavior, ethics and morality related to the family and true love. This Heavenly Law is based on the principle of the Three Blessings, where the Second Blessing of conjugal love – and this means heartistic and emotional as well as physical love- is

preceded by the First Blessing where our primary concern is vertical, being focused on becoming mature sons and daughters who can become one with God.

In addition to the importance of allowing Heaven’s principles related to human growth and relationships to emerge, there is also the very real problem of humanity’s propensity to act in an unprincipled, evil and sinful manner empowered by fallen nature and the fallen model of behavior. Since the misuse of love also factors very strongly in humanity’s fallen past, guidelines related to love within and between human relationships must also be seriously dealt with. Related to this, I found some specific guidance from our True Father in a question and answer session given in 1965. This is from a document entitled –“The Master Speaks on Satan, The Fall, and Evil”

“Because the power of love was so strong, God had warned that Adam and Eve not to touch one another. Don’t even look at the knowledge of the tree of good and evil. It is too tempting. This means, don’t even contact the opposite sex until you are allowed to do it. If you contact, you are tempted. If you go to a certain point, you can’t trust yourself not to go farther. So don’t start. On this matter, the outlook is very strict. We are all human beings and we know how tempting love can be. We do not even like to have men and women going somewhere together, because we know that humans are not strong. This may be a great problem in America, but it is essential. Never trust yourself too much. My dispensation is to establish a new lineage of pure blood.”

Question: What exactly was God referring to when he told Adam and Eve not to eat forbidden fruit? What did He actually say?

Answer: When God told Adam not to eat of the forbidden fruit, Lucifer heard it too. God would not have told them, “Don’t eat the fruit of knowledge…” as the Bible says. This is only a poetic expression. If I tell you exactly what they were told, it would not be good. This information is not written anywhere, and if I say it now what I say will spread. Even though God told them fairly clearly, Adam and Eve did not take it seriously. God said, “Don’t respond to Lucifer’s temptation. Don’t love him.” But those things did not sound serious to them. When one is too young and is not aware of things, some commands do not make sense. You cannot tell things too early. But the angel knew.

Based on guidance from True Father like the above and my own life experience, my opinion is that the boundary line of permissible activity between a man and a woman both at the time prior to the fall, in today’s fallen world and even an ideal society, must naturally be guided by very strict norms and conventions. The reason for this strictness is that the power to deviate from God’s principle related to love is very strong – stronger than the principle alone. Humans are weak for this type of influence because they are designed to be totally attracted to love. The Principle explains this in Chapter 2, Section 3.1, page 65-66:

“Human beings are created through the Principle, and they are meant to live according to the way of the Principle. Therefore, it cannot be that the force inherent in the Principle would induce a person to deviate from the way of the Principle and cause him to fall…But if some stronger force from a different direction and with an unprincipled purpose collides with the, they will surely fall. The force which is stronger than the force of the Principle is none other than the power of love. While human beings are in the state of immaturity, it is possible that the power of unprincipled love can induce them to fall.

Or put in another way, from the Divine Principle in Chapter 2, Section 3.2, page 66:

Why did God nurture the faith of Adam and Eve by giving them the commandment, “Do not eat of the fruit”? In their immature state, Adam and Eve could not be directly governed by God through love. Because the power of love is stronger than the power of the Principle, God foresaw that if they ever formed a common base with the Archangel, there was a possibility that they could succumb to the power of deviant, unprincipled love and fall. To prevent this, God gave Adam and Eve the commandment that forbade them from relating with the Archangel in this way (my emphasis).

In my estimation, the externally process of the fall and supra principled behavior depended on three key elements – freedom, opportunity and temptation. If anyone of these three elements is removed, then the process of the fall does not develop. This dynamic can be likened to the 3 elements that are necessary for combustion – fuel, air and the igniter. If any one of these three elements is removed, there can be no fire. Likewise, I think, it was and is with the fall. Now, the element of freedom was given by God and is an intrinsic element in the realm of the indirect and direct dominion. This then could not be removed and taken away from the dynamic. The temptation could have been avoided IF the Archangel had been able to be faithful to God’s Law – but God knew that there was a possibility that Lucifer would misbehave. The only other part of this dynamic then, is the component of opportunity. To me, this is what the guideline to not touch is pointing to. Take away the opportunity for the power of give and take, especially stemming from selfishness, to develop and the fall certainly could have been and currently can be avoided. Essentially, if any human being enters into give and take action that could develop or draw that power of love and especially evil love into it (opportunity), it is most probable that the result would be unprincipled and even fallen activity. Thus types of give and take action such as casual horizontal give and take activity between immature boys and girls or men and women is suspect because it so easily leads to emotional, heartistic, romantic and then ultimately sexual give and take.

Of course, we can and should cultivate wonderful friendships with our parents and siblings as well as extended family relationships and extra family relationships with those of our own gender. But we need to be extremely careful in relationships with those of the opposite gender. We can certainly be friendly, respectful, cordial, gracious, benevolent, formal (and the ballroom dance ministry can certainly fit here) and professional in our contacts with those of the opposite gender but those relationships can never be allowed to

escalate beyond such a limited dynamic. This certainly does not preclude true altruistic behavior and attitudes being extended to all we interact with, but the personal, emotional bonding aspect must be severely limited. The main point that I wish to convey is that the ethics, morality, norms and culture of a God centered democratic society need to accommodate a cooperative and yet strict convention between opposite gendered individuals. I don’t advocate utilizing a model for social life where women must be shut away from the general flow of relationships in the public domain in order for a society to maintain a moral order. On the contrary, both women and men must be allowed to fulfill their geniuses and contribute their talents for the sake of humanity’s advancement in a free, democratic and prosperous society. But in a society where the sacred and secular are blended, the internal strictness or ethics between men and women must be a norm and convention that is predominant at the cultural level. Surely, if the presence of God pervades all relationships and each person’s heart, the propensity to misuse love and advance self-centered behavior, to sin against God and our brothers and sister, must surely fade and instead a public will to advance and follow Heavenly order and guidelines must prevail– reinforcing an orderly convention on a cultural and social level. Thus, I would suggest that in a Godly world the social expression of interrelations between men and women would continue to be strictly followed, but the motivation to do so would flow quite naturally from each person’s original mind and heart due to their bonding with God.

Some guidelines in relationship to this order requires that we should be very careful to never be alone with someone of the opposite gender who is not our relative and that we especially avoid any physical contact which goes beyond the very minimum (even one- on-one meetings with your opposite gender boss should be conducted with the door open and never outside the work environment). Why would this be the case? Within the family, the parents and their siblings function as a harmonizing point between siblings and cousins. Thus, it is rare to find cases of incest within that dynamic. Though, theoretically, all humanity are brothers and sisters under God, the original mind and heart in men and women is often disconnected from the mind and heart of God and thus the ability of the human mind to discipline and control the body and its actions is, at this point in humanity’s restoration, severely limited. Bluntly, at this point in the development of a Godly society, humanity is extremely immature and thus cannot be trusted to naturally act according to the Will of Heaven. Therefore, in situations that require one- on-one interactions, strict rules/guidelines that utilize spiritual wisdom and techniques arrived at through hard gained experience must be followed, such as the principle of the triad. Another valuable guideline is that individuals need to be very transparent in their interactive connections by sharing the situation/contents/specifics and receiving advice and guidance from parents, spouse and even adult children. Some would suggest that men and women should avoid handshakes and hugs. This is somewhat tough in a culture where these practices are common, but be careful and aware that what may seem to be harmless is not always so. (One sidebar: due to the extensive historical perversion of love, we need to even be vigilant against evil behavior that can emerge between “trusted” family members – but that is another discussion and, at this point, I only mention the problem as a point of caution related to the way of restoration).

The dating culture which is so prevalent in the Western culture is absolutely not based on such a Heavenly Law, morality or ethic. In addition it is based on the pattern of the fall where Lucifer initiated a horizontal and self-centered relationship with Eve, who was not and was never to be, his spouse; without the permission of God and outside the marriage Blessing relationship. Since that time, relationships initiated by Lucifer type men and fallen Eve type women are pervasive and frequently dominate and characterize relationships between men and women. So guidelines to block this kind of give and take from starting and thus remove the element of opportunity would include no dating or cross-gender friendships – even group dates (multiple pairs out together) or activities are problematic because such activities play into the component of opportunity and thus are dangerous. Unfortunately it is a dominant pattern in our current society and thus looks normal and attractive from the outside. From the outset these activities look innocent but they can be the beginning point of the perception of the opposite sex from a horizontal and plurality perspective - even though, in the beginning it may not be characterized by a one-on-one characteristic. Remember, the power of immature and especially evil love can quickly build and tap into our basic desire to be loved. As immortalized in the song by Johnny Lee Looking for Love(in all the wrong places): “I was looking for love in all the wrong places. Looking for love in too many faces. Searching their eyes, looking for traces of what I’m dreaming of”. I suspect that the lists of do’s and don’ts could be much more extensive, and probably should be, but I think you get the idea. As Rev. Sudo use to say in his workshop lectures on the Fall, “Nip it in the Bud”.

The above types of guidance would be likened to the Biblical guideline of “don’t even touch the fruit”. I could also explain it in the following way - don’t even start to have an exclusive, horizontal, cross-gender give and take, friendship, relationship, etc. outside of your family and then ultimately a Blessed Marriage, starting with puberty and continuing until the end of your life on this earth! I am also referring to activity that would mimic the pattern of the fall, such as any type of give and take between an older or more sexually mature man or woman towards a less mature person of the opposite sex. The reason why this second type of relationship is so dangerous is because it not only pulls the power of deviant love with it but it also brings the couple into the arena and realm of Satan’s triumph and dominion. By doing so, they put themselves at the mercy of Satan and his legions who have a vested interest in carrying on or continuing the impetus or pattern of fallen history. I once used the example of the movie trilogy “The Matrix” to illustrate this phenomenon. In the Matrix, the security system of the Matrix would place certain gate-keepers at key points of exit from the Matrix. They would look like normal human beings – drunks, old men, young virile men or beautiful women but when someone from the rebellion approached the exit point they were guarding, these gatekeepers would be taken over by the evil Mr. Smith. Likewise, when a human being enters into improper and unprincipled horizontal give and take, no matter how innocent it may start, the man involved suddenly “becomes” or acts in the manner of the fallen Archangel or the woman involved suddenly “becomes” or acts in the manner of fallen Eve. More than likely, they are offering a base for the additional influence of fallen spiritual beings – human or angelic. The Bible is quite insightful when it says that we are fighting powers and principalities, especially in this arena. I would refer to the Book of Ephesians 6: 10-20:

Therefore take the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; beside all these, taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that utterance may be given me in opening my moth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.

What are some of the problems that are associated with the dating culture? Well, it trains men and women to view all others of the opposite gender as part of a pool of potential sexual partners and develops a shopping mentality whereby each individual plays the field until they find Mr. or Miss. Right, totally oblivious to the searcher’s preparedness and spiritual maturity. The focus is on finding the right person rather than being the right person who can contribute their good character and love to a fulfilling partnership. And since it is often coupled with sexual looseness, tremendous emotional scars and heart damage are pervasive, though even just emotional bonding done outside of the exclusivity principle imprints upon and causes damage to our spirit because we are so vulnerable in relationship to all things of the heart. What’s wrong with this approach? First, it cultivates the unprincipled, irresponsible idea that a person can have many, many exclusive partners in a revolving door type model, thereby preparing and training them for constant break-ups and divorce rather than fidelity and exclusive faithfulness. This serial dating can and usually does lead to a prevalent pattern of promiscuousness, adultery, infidelity and philandering. An indicator and contributor to this terrible state of affairs is the prevalence of the cultural phenomenon of pornography currently utilized by both men and women. The pornography industry tells the viewer that every man and woman, of any age, can be their personal sexual object and source of ultimate and ideal individual sexual gratification. The pornography industry is in fact perpetrating the greatest lie related to the realm of love and sexuality. It is promoting putrid garbage lust instead of holy, honorable love, which can only be achieved through mutual satisfaction grounded in absolute concern for the partner.

Second, the dating approach totally removes the perspective that the one who should find a person’s eternal partner should be God and not themselves. It diverts a person from seeking God’s choice for their partner and replaces it with each individual’s efforts to find their eternal spouse on their own, oblivious to their own state of preparedness. Since the focus in this process sits squarely on the individual and what they want and can get from the relationship, a base is also made for fallen elements to enter into the process since the fall was essentially grounded on selfishness and individual gratification. When relationships are initiated and degraded to this level of self-firstness, they tend to become extreme dysfunctional and present no basis where true love cannot develop because true love is all about living and sacrificing for the sake of the other, upon each partner

thinking what they can give as opposed to a person looking for what he or she can selfishly gain from their relationships. So, the worst expression of the dating culture can undermine and lead humankind to the point where true love can never be found or achieved because it does not allow individuals to train themselves for horizontal exclusivity, takes God’s will out of the picture and has the potential to is results in dysfunctional relationships where neither partner knows how to invest in, be responsible for and to sacrifice for the other through serving their partners, and thereby invest in the process of achieving an enduring love. Those individuals whose original nature are strong and who enter the dating process with tunnel vision, purposively seeking for a mutually beneficial exclusive partnership may be able to break the chain of serial dating, but I would suggest that even they do not escape the dating process totally unscathed. I would assert that all their past broken relationships can and do leave emotional scars that take time to heal and carry the potential to interfere with their current long-term, exclusive relationship. It is also possible that old relationships will literally reassert themselves and the ghosts of past relations will try to undermine and even test the strength of their former partner’s exclusive bonding. A good mantra to remember is that the relationship with the ONE is undermined through experiences with the MANY.

I’m sure you’re wondering how to find that exclusive partner, when the time is right and God has approved, if the methodology of dating is out. Since the genesis of the search for the exclusive partner is at its core should be the search for God’s choice and Will, then a methodology modeled after a dialog with God is the best approach. Since God figuratively is in a vertical relationship with humankind and is also our Heavenly Parent, consulting with and seeking the recommendation or matching of someone in the parental position concerned with God’s viewpoint and Will is the best. This could be Blessed couples who are the biological parent of the person seeking a matching or trained spiritual parents, trained matching advisors or trained pastors for those new to this approach without the benefit of biological parents adept, spiritually prepared and commissioned – the key point being that the recommendation for a matching must be approached from a spiritual perspective and not to enhance the individual or their family’s possessions, money, status or power. The other part of the God/humankind dialog to be modeled relates to humankind fulfilling their portion of responsibility. This means that the one seeking their exclusive partner through a vertical matching, has to determine whether they agree the recommendation received is indeed God’s will and also deciding honestly whether they can fulfill their responsibility to make the matching successful, which requires extensive prayer and soul searching on the part of both partners. This phase is so important because historically, the problem in accomplishing God’s will has always rested with humankind’s failure to fulfill their 5% responsibility.

I need to speak to those of you reading this article whose past relationship experience is entrenched in the dating and cross-gender exclusive friendship experiences. If the words of guidance found within this article resonate with your original mind and you are determined to change your behavior and lifestyle, I must caution you that undoing your historical relationship muddle will not be so easy. For those of you for whom serial dating and cross gender relationships/friendships have become a philandering habit and way of life, you will most likely have to deal with feelings akin to emotional withdrawal,

loneliness, awkwardness, and self-accusation as you conjure up expectations that those men or women you use to so freely interact with will judge you as being cold, unfeeling and antisocial. I must remind you that in choosing to walk this new way of life, you are going against the current relationship convention but remember that the current relationship convention is not based on God’s original purpose for the human social experience. You are also choosing to go against a way of life that comforted you on some limited level. At these times, it is good to remember that your earlier (or current) friends, companions and sometimes lovers are not responsible for leading you astray but that you bear the majority responsibility because in following an unprincipled lifestyle you consciously ignored the mandates of your original nature and Heavenly law which certainly stunted your spiritual growth, especially those of you who knew the contents of Divine Principle, especially the Principle of Creation and the Principle of the Fall.

It is also good to reflect on whose good opinion you value most, God’s or those spiritually immature individuals that you incorrectly engaged with. It will take a lot of courage and discipline on your part to allow your original mind to direct and control your behavior, enabling you to challenge all past, present and future limited, unprincipled and especially sinful behavior. To do so, you will need a strong determination to live and strive for the ideal instead of settling for more immediate gratification. In addition, since satan is used to having you follow his lifestyle, morality, ethics and behavior, he will mercilessly and relentlessly persecute, pursue and attempt to pull you back to your past unprincipled lifestyle, especially sending many tempters/temptresses your way. That also means those with whom you have already have a history of exclusive friendships or relationships will try their utmost to reestablish the past patterns of relationships with you that you mutually enjoyed. These tests and phenomenon will repeat themselves incessantly until you have prevailed in your quest to do the right thing every time, no matter the nature or intensity of tests and attacks that are thrown at you. Remember that you are embarking on a restoration course, whereby all of your past mistakes will continuously recycle and re-emerge and that this time around you are responsible to restore those mistakes by not engaging in limited, unprincipled and especially sinful behavior. Also your determination and practice will be continually done and redone every day until you have solidified a victorious record (think of the movie “Groundhog Day”). Even at the point where righteousness has become your habit and way of life, you can never let your guard down, because the problem of backsliding is very real. Please be comforted that, based on continuous victory, this restoration path will straighten and you will move past the initial mine field. Also be comforted that the end goal is so very much worth it. Your efforts to pioneer a new convention and norm will surely benefit those who follow after you in the great work of building a Godly society and way of life.

There is also another problem that must be addressed. I must emphasize that just being aware of boundaries or guidelines based on Heavenly Law and the laws related to True Love is often not enough to deter humanity from pursuing an unprincipled convention or even the way of the fall. With spiritually immature people, the problem often comes, as so wisely observed by my daughter, in that they tend to have an overabundance of emotion without a counterbalancing abundance of wisdom. Or they are strongly in touch with their own feelings and desire for love but are unable see the bigger and longer term

picture and to view their real situation from God’s point of view. This could be likened to their following what they think to be right and their self-gratifying desires rather than their original mind and heart. If you couple the natural attraction to love with the impetus towards independent action and resistance to external control, a powerful drive that I believe comes from our original mind’s mandate to fulfill our portion of responsibility, the situation can quickly turn into a tinderbox ready to explode. In order to allow themselves to pursue even deviant love and their own independent way and avoid detection, individuals can become very deceptive, choosing to conceal and lie about their activities to avoid being diverted from them. This tendency towards independence and the desire to seek love should be a good characteristic but if it is turned away from God’s Will, in the direction of my own will, then the result can be a tendency to pursue the misguided or confused direction and lesser good or even evil with gusto. Given this scenario, though a person who is headed for trouble would able to get through a temptation by following strict guidelines as embodied in the commandment, they probably won’t remember them, take those warning seriously or will even choose to block and attack this Godly advice even though the storm clouds may be looming. To put it bluntly, they may know what is right to do but they honestly won’t care and will consciously choose to ignore or will actively discount and criticize those pearls of wisdom. “That’s it” they may say and quickly run away or close their ears, mind and heart. They may even have the blind arrogance to think that such guidelines don’t apply to them or that they can handle any situation without being negatively influenced by that situation and thus don’t have to listen to what they consider silly, irrelevant, unenlightened, ignorant, outdated and old fashion morality.

I am sure that during their journey down the slippery slope to hell, their subconscious would be screaming out to them to stop but more than likely they will be in complete blind denial, choosing to ignore their God given sense until it is too late. Usually when someone is “going to the dark side” things can get very grey and for various reasons they tend to isolate themselves from mature folks or wise directives and rely upon their own ideas and perceptions (and probably low spiritual influence since the isolated individual is more of an easy target and prey) and the prevailing morality gleaned from Satan’s world– a dangerous situation indeed. Another pattern that could emerge would be an attraction to the horizontal morality and prevailing cultural ethics (or lack thereof) coupled with a desire to gain approval from their peer group rather than from a vertical center point. I believe that “touching” the realm of the fall also tends to draw upon a person an environment of spiritual confusion with the accompanying tendency to get stuck in the selfish, me-firstness worldview that ultimately leaves them vulnerable to the coming temptation (and believe me, it will come). Actually, the scenario of confusion that surrounds a time of temptation to engage in unprincipled behavior has it root in the fall and continues to this day and both young and old are vulnerable to it. Since this was the pattern that existed at the time of the fall, it is not surprising that a similar scenario could occur in the lives of humanity, who are part of, immersed in or, as may be the case of blessed couples and their issue, surrounded by the lineage and culture that emerged due to that original fall. Of course, such an experience should be clearly seen as a major test and obstacle that by all means must to be triumphed over. But, if the person being tested is just caught in their limited, small minded and self-focused realm of perception

and in the desire for immediate happiness no matter the cost, then the tendency will be for them to repeat the process of the fall and the lifestyle that emerged due to it rather than prevailing against it. For example, in Chapter 3 of the Divine Principle (Eschatology), Section 4.2, page 101, we find the following description of the last days:

“The era when the paths of these good and evil sovereignties intersect is the Last Days. This is also the time when Adam and Eve’s fall from the top of the growth stage will be restored through indemnity. All people in this era will suffer through great ideological confusion, much as the first human ancestors at the point of their temptation were utterly confused as to whom they should obey and what should guide their actions.”

Since the scenario of the fall and to repeat unprincipled behavior tends to clone and be repeated, confusion is bound to prevail in the lives of immature human beings, especially during times of temptation from without or within. In addition to this, there is a deeper pattern that will manifest itself in the lives of human beings during their growing period. This is the tendency of the immature to not grasp the heart, mind and wisdom of God while they are in the indirect dominion – that realm prior to the realm of perfection. Or put in another way, we tend to “not get it” or to be dense and heartistically blind, to not see or understand our situation from God’s Point of View. This is not only a characteristic of humanity’s fallen nature; it is also a characteristic of an emotionally immature human being. This is the deeper meaning of the sentence from the Divine Principle in Chapter 2, Section 3.2, page 66, “In their immature state, Adam and Eve could not be directly governed by God through love.” In the Question and Answer session from 1965, True Father expanded on this concept:

Question: What do you mean by “control human love”?

Answer: During the time when children are growing, they do not know love. These days, children see through TV and through parents, they see the love affair before they really mature and sense by themselves. In Adam and Eve’s case, they had nothing to see. They did not know about sexual love. As long as they didn’t know anything about it, God could not teach them. God had to wait until they matured and knew something about it before they could come under His Direct Dominion. Until that time, God could not tell them, “Don’t do this. Don’t have a sexual relationship with Lucifer”. Through natural growth and development, they would have matured and learned to know of love. Then God could have blessed them in marriage. They were just to grow naturally, and when they reached the point when they came to know one another, then God wanted to bless them. It is different from the state of children today. They know things before they actually mature. So Direct Dominion means direct control of their love by His love. In all other things, God could give them a direct command, but not about love relationships. Lucifer knew about sexual love before Adam and Eve were aware of it. He was not told this directly, but knew it in his heart.”

Well, to return to the question of how to resist or overcome habits of unprincipled and evil behavior. I don’t mean to imply that there is no hope and that all humanity will continuously falter and fall during their growing period. But the question remains - what must we do to avoid the mines in the minefield or falling into the pitfalls along the path of life. How do we avoid being ensnared by the Devil and ending up in or staying in Hell? The question succinctly put is how do we develop the spiritual power to resist, restore or both? The answer to both questions is that we need to know the truth but we also need to possess the core character to substantiate that wisdom. There is, of course, the option of avoiding temptation altogether by following the commandment and thus removing the dynamic of opportunity. This is a very good solution and is an approach that was utilized by God with Adam and Eve. There is, however, another solution that I believe needs to be developed and that couples very well with the need for strict guidelines. I have come to the conclusion that as well as having strict guidelines in their lives and clear knowledge of the proper way of life, all people need to establish their own strong belief in and relationship with God. To put it another way, they need to develop Faith. It is then up to each person to apply this faith to the realm of the Word of God, such as Principle of Creation and the Principle of the Fall, and to cultivate a heartistic commitment to leaning and living the lessons imparted by those Words of Heavenly Law, morality and ethics. In other words, the Word of God must matter to you; it must be given your utmost respect, adoration and appreciation. Those strict guidelines that might have at one time been seen as bothersome or meddling must instead be exalted, appreciated and followed. My point is that for good advice to be followed, it needs to be validated from within. If a person has internalized their faith and has a strong and vivid connection to God, they are more likely to seek, listen to, have absolute faith in and follow Heavenly advice and God’s Words and thereby avoid evil action. The Divine Principle explains this in Chapter 2, section 3.2, pages 66-67:

Because the power of love is stronger than the power of the Principle, God foresaw that if they ever formed a common base with the Archangel, there was a possibility that they could succumb to the power of deviant, unprincipled love and fall. To prevent this, God gave Adam and Eve the commandment that forbade them from relating with the Archangel in this way. No matter how powerful the unprincipled love of the Archangel might be, had Adam and Eve adhered to God’s commandment, forming a common base with God and engaging in give and take with Him and no other, the power of the Archangel’s unprincipled love would not have affected them and they would never have fallen.

So the formula would read like this: Word of God + Faith in that Word = Method to resist the temptation and power of deviant & unprincipled love. Thus a crucial pattern we need to follows to avoid following an unprincipled lifestyle and even the fall is to possess a vital and vivid connection to God and faith in His Words. We must absolutely trust and have faith in His Words from the depth of our soul, original mind and heart and allow ourselves to be governed by and be object to them.

In addition, at the same time Adam and Eve were avoiding the fall, they should have been working on growing their spiritual lives. It would make sense that the closer to perfection Adam and Eve got, the easier it would have been for them to see with God’s eyes and heart. To apply this scenario in our lives, we need to apply the Principle and practice the principles of spiritual growth on a daily basis. By our doing good works centered on God’s Word, studying God’s Words, developing a vital and vivid relationship with God through utilizing pray, participating in good public works, attending church, tithing, practicing a vertically based life-style and by setting indemnity conditions and even more so participating in living indemnity conditions we can divest ourselves of distortions in our spiritual self and gain the good vitality elements needed to hasten our advance towards perfection. By living a public lifestyle (living for the sake of others, connecting to God’s Providence) we can also make conditions to separate from Satan and elevate our spirit and thus come closer to God. This is a proactive approach as opposed to a reactive/defensive approach. This is the meaning of Chapter 4:8-10 from the Book of Philippians:

“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, do; and the God of peace will be with you.”

There is another pattern of behavior that I would like to introduce at this point. This is the pattern of behavior that was not utilized by Adam and Eve and contributed to their downfall. When disaster, war, or confusion reigns around you and cannot be avoided, then you need a strategy and tactic to survive those circumstances and be victorious. Remember that Adam and Eve knew God and had faith in God and they also knew the commandment. One thing they neglected to do during the time of the temptation was to continually check-in with God, especially when the atmosphere and environment around them was getting confused. I am therefore giving you a mandate to pray and talk with God, to seek for God’s guidance through His word recorded in True Father’s speeches and the Divine Principle, to seek the internal guidance of others whom you trust to speak God’s words and to listen to your original mind and heart continually during your restoration journey ALL THE TIME, but especially in times of spiritual confusion. And practice this lifestyle in both the great and the seemingly mundane (this is a “don’t forget to cut the pigeon and dove” thing). Do not walk this path blindly and tossed about by the circumstances of utter confusion that will certainly constantly surround you. If you earnestly seek for God and His Will, with all of your focus and heart, He must and will answer your desperate plea. True Father introduced this concept during the Question and Answer session in 1965.

“ Question: Adam and Eve were told not to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Where they told in the same way in which our Master was told the Divine Principle, by having an even conscience—that is, on a level---and then

establishing a vertical contact with God. If not, then how were they told? They were in the Indirect Dominion; and God did not tell them directly, did He? Answer: The 90 degree angle was not necessary for Adam. It is only necessary for us because we are under satanic domination, so we have to have an even conscience to receive God’s thought. It did not apply to Adam. The command not to eat of the fruit was given to Adam by God directly. It did not violate the Indirect Dominion. The Direct Dominion of God implies the Direct Dominion of Man’s love by God. Apart from this love, God could teach them directly, even in their Growth Stage. He could give the command directly, but He could not interfere or have dominion over Adam and Eve’s love directly. If Adam and Eve had asked God whether they should respond to Lucifer, then God could have told them directly (my emphasis). When I said that I make a condition beforehand, I mean that I always ask God if it is all right to offer my offering. Then God is responsible to answer. But Adam and Eve did not ask God. So in the indirect dominion, if you ask God, He has to tell you. But God cannot control human love. That happens only in the Direct Dominion.”

My main theme in this presentation is on the dynamic and struggle related to defining and achieving purity seen from a broad, spiritual perspective, and Godliness in each of our lives. The task of achieving and maintaining purity is so crucial because it is not until the last remnants of the fall including unprincipled behavior, evil and sin are eradicated in an individual and he or she goes forward to grow in the way God intended Adam and Eve to grow, that God’s Purpose of Creation and the establishment of His Kingdom, the realm of the sacred social, can be realized. It is precisely because the mandate to rid the world of every aspect of sin is so central to God’s Providence, all efforts to advance that mandate occur in such a battleground between the forces of good and the forces of evil. It is paramount that we enter into this spiritual battleground with effective weapons and armor and equip ourselves with the best strategy and tactics available. To not do this is naïve, foolhardy, shortsighted and can end with disastrous results. You can be sure that the satanic forces are well equipped and professional in advancing their cause. Those of us wishing to pioneer a Godly world need to be even better equipped and trained than those forces of evil. Do not be dismayed, but rather express a spirit of gratitude and offer a heartfelt hallelujah! We have the ultimate secret weapon; we are so fortunate to be living in the era of the True Parents, who for the first time in history can offer a way out of hell and into Heaven. True Parents represent a beacon of hope, a real, tried and tested pattern of victory and a new root and lineage for humanity to engraft onto and inherit. So though the way brought by God through the True Parents is steep and rocky and wrought with difficulty, this restoration course out of hell is nonetheless an expression of the grace and love of God. My purpose in sharing the preceding thoughts and insights in this paper is to offer support, tools and encouragement to each of you during your journey on your personal path of restoration, in your efforts to help others on their path of restoration and your efforts to contribute to God’s providential campaign which is actively unfolding during this cross-roads time in history. God Bless and Keep you always in His care and may you also remember to continually comfort His Heart.