🇺🇸Shinghi Detlefsen

Hosts: You're someone I've collaborated with in the past on certain projects. We know about you and your wife and your amazing journey with your company and your supplements, which have helped a lot of women and families achieve pregnancy and healthy fertility. We'd love to hear more about your background and your story, as we teased a little bit in the intro. You grew up like the two of us, Nancy and I, in a unificationist household with parents who were blessed by Reverend and Dr. Moon way back when. We'd love to hear where things started out for you. You talked about your father's death, but maybe we could start a little bit earlier than that. Is there a particular memory growing up in the church that sticks out to you?

Shinghi: I think I had a really happy childhood. I was raised in California, and for the most part, a lot of first-generation unificationists who joined were hippies. There were a lot of soul searchers and people who wanted a new world. That was the wave at that time, in the 70s and late 60s. So there was a lot of idealism from our parents. But because there were so many of them living together, it created these incredible idealistic communities. That's how I really think of my childhood. Although I wasn't surrounded by my grandparents — they lived on the East Coast, and on my mom's side, both her parents died before I was born, so I never got to meet them — I was surrounded by aunts and uncles. I don't have to describe it: you are constantly safe. I think that's the key word, because you're in a community of people who all believed in the same ideals and were striving for the same ideals. And then you were raised with the children of those folks. Especially in the Bay Area, California, we had probably one of the largest groups of unificationists in the same area other than New York and New Jersey.

Shinghi: I had a great childhood. We had summer camps. I really loved my parents. I fought with my brother, all the normal stuff. And it's so funny because all of those friendships that I built with those people still exist today — whether you're inside the unificationist movement or outside, if you've left or if you want a different way, everyone still hangs out with each other. I think that's the fruit of it. If you judge something by the fruit, that was some pretty good fruit. My happiest memory is really just that, in general, in childhood, I never felt unsafe. I never felt scared. I felt like I had this giant community that took care of me, and that was something I loved.

Hosts: I love how you express the word safe. That's been coming up a lot for me in my own journey recently — the importance of safety in order to really fully express yourself, learn, and search in your own development. I'm curious, though: you talked about the first generation coming in and raising kids together in this very idealistic perspective, and I wonder if the flip side of that can be feeling a lot of pressure to live up to those ideals. Is that something that you experienced growing up?

Shinghi: Yeah, certainly. I think our parents didn't know what to expect with us. The way I like to frame my beliefs and the Unification Church is, we're like V1 — version one. Our parents were really V1 of our beliefs in action. If you launch a product, the first version of that product is usually okay, but it's not great. There's a lot of kinks you have to work out. You're going to find bugs. You're going to find issues. That's V1. So a lot of mistakes were made in the expectation of who I would be, who my brothers would be. There was just a lot of expectation when they found out the reality of this world, raising children. They went from these hippies' idealism to having to deal with the world again when you have children. I've experienced this as a parent now: children are out of your control. As much as you want to control them, you can't. They have free will, just like all of us.

Shinghi: It took me a long time, but I've really understood what my parents wanted for me. They did not want me to not sin. What they wanted was for me to experience maximum happiness in my life. I tell people, I view the Divine Principle, which is the core belief of our faith, not as a tool to avoid sin. It's a tool to create the greatest level of happiness that you can experience in your life. Here are the steps to achieve that. That's what my parents' intention was. Was it conveyed exactly as that? No — we're at V1. But their heart was there. They wanted to build these ideal families, and a lot of them didn't even know what that meant and the level of responsibility it takes to build an ideal family. Our parents are very special people in launching V1, and then we're V2. I'm not a perfect parent — I have four children, and it's very difficult all the time. But I can see the fruit of what they wanted. When I had children, I was like, all right, this makes a lot of sense. This is the purpose of my life. A core part of it. The most important part.

Hosts: I appreciate that perspective — version one, version two. In some speeches from Reverend Dr. Moon, they talked about the expectation that this will take 10 to 15 generations to really root out, expose, and work on all the different kinds of issues that can come up in a family. We all come from unique backgrounds. Our parents come from completely different cultures and nationalities, and to bring that together and work it out in just one couple is unrealistic. But like you said, it takes those — what do they call them — early adopters. Our parents were the early adopters of a brand new vision for what the world could be: that it could be centered on happy, whole families. But they didn't have all the tools, maybe, to make that happen. So I think it's really important to give it some grace — give ourselves, give our parents some grace — and look at it in the bigger perspective. Are we making moves with every generation and with each one of us? I really appreciate that perspective.

Shinghi: If you go to my Twitter account, what's pinned right now is: think in generations. That's the way I see our faith and our church evolving. It's going to take generations. In the most simple format, you can think of it like this: third generation. My children are the first to experience first-generation, these new ideals, this new truth and understanding of the world, being shared as a grandparent. Versus me, who grew up and my grandparents were not unificationist. So already there's tension, because my grandparents believed something different than my parents. I'm different than my cousins, and you feel different. Whereas what's happening with my children is, because they witnessed my parents and Jonah's parents being active unificationists, they don't feel different. That disconnect is gone. But they're also receiving intentional grandparenthood through these ideals. So they're the first generation really to experience three generations. Their experience of being a unificationist would be very different than my experience.

Shinghi: Further, they're going to be the first, if you go three more generations to the fifth generation, the fifth generation is actually the first generation to be raised by grandparents who were raised by grandparents. It's a very different experience with each one of these generations. Maybe it's a purifying — the standard that you set. It's all based on intention. You can be a unificationist and have no intention to be a unificationist. So it's intention and action that can create these experiences for multi-generations. Also, us millennials and folks of my peer group, we tend to think we're the center of the world. Our parents also believed that the world is going to change in their one generation. But the reality is, it's not. In the grand scheme of time, we're nothing. We're gobs.

Hosts: It's so difficult. We're so isolated. I was just thinking about exactly what you described while I was driving home to get to this interview. Literally, I was dropping off my daughter at daycare, rushing from her doctor's appointment that ran late, and trying to get over here. I'm frustrated out of my mind because my husband had to go into work today because of the snow day and all these different things. People are not meant to be these singular family units trying to do everything by ourselves. It brought to mind Hillary Clinton's book, It Takes a Village. It really takes a village. I was imagining communal living. People joke and they deride it, but there is something special about being in such close proximity with people who share your values. I think America tried to do that with the small-town life. I don't know exactly what is really eroding that — not talking to your neighbours anymore, not getting to know the people who live around you and building those relationships so that you can support each other.

Shinghi: I felt that. My dad passed away when I was 15, and my mom passed away last year. But my mom moved to Seattle to support us and our kids. What she showed me in those couple of years in Seattle was the value of a grandparent. I never completely understood it before. It's like — if a child has their parents, they have two units of love, let's just say. One unit from their mom, one unit from their dad. And those are stressed-out units. You're maxed out, you're working, it's very difficult. But a grandparent comes in, and each child should have an additional four units of love from their grandparents, on both sides, in the ideal. So that's six units of love that grandchild can now receive, because they have grandparents. That's just the way it's supposed to be, because a grandparent ideally shouldn't be working anymore. Their focus should be just on the grandchild, just being there.

Shinghi: The kind of love that my mom gave, especially to my oldest, Leon, was just that kind of love. It was just, hey, I'm here. I have nothing else on my mind. Let's go to the park. Let's go for a walk. Let's read a book. There's no noise. None of that. Just, hey, let's go spend time. And Leon is a freaking incredible kid. I really attribute so much of that to my mom, because she was there for him. And then, even on that level, going back to my faith — my faith is, it's weird, I don't want to say it's centered around death, but it is in a way. The reason I'm a unificationist is because I found truth in it. And I found truth because my dad died. When your dad dies, especially at a young age, you have a desire to go find him. You can either choose that they don't exist anymore, that they're just gone, or you can choose: I'm going to find a way to find them and reconnect. That was my journey of a life of faith.

Shinghi: My mom passed away last year, and it was such an interesting experience because with my dad, I was not cognizant. I was not aware of what was happening. It was like, boom, you get hit by a car, and then you're figuring it out. But with my mom, I was very aware, because I knew, okay, my mom's going to die today. She was on life support. She decided to end life support. She had two open-heart surgeries in the same year. They couldn't fix the problem. She basically said, it's time to go. I had given a sermon earlier that year, and I said that you're not supposed to learn about death from your parents dying, in the ideal state. You're supposed to learn about death from your grandparents. There's this whole circle of life that is so broken if you don't have this multi-generational intentional family. The reason you're supposed to learn about death from your grandparent is because, if you have those units of love coming to you, you've built that relationship with your grandparent. When they die, you want to go find them. That's the nexus of your spirit. For me, at least, that's the nexus of my spiritual life. For a lot of people, death is a nexus to go find a spiritual life or to find a reason in this world.

Shinghi: When my mom died, she told me, it's time to go. My brother and I pushed back. We said, no, Mom, you're still alive, we can maybe find a solution for this. And then she wrote: teach Leon about death. He's my oldest son. She related that back to herself. Even in Leon's prayers — we trade off; I pray one night, he prays one night — his prayers are all about Grandma in spirit. He's just like, oh, I hope Grandma has a good day in spirit world with Grandpa, I hope you're having fun, stuff like that. And it's exactly what she wanted. Teach Leon about death, and he's connecting with her spiritually. So we're really supposed to live in these multi-generational families, not only to have that level of support to make it so easy to have a family, but to have the nexus of a spiritual life. And maybe it's not even that you're supposed to learn about death from your grandparent — it could be your great-grandparent, if you have this relationship with them.

Shinghi: It's so easy to be distracted in this world, to not give a crap about the spiritual life. It's so easy to pick up your phone and be like, cool, I'm just going to browse my day away. And then you just go to your next day. So it takes these severe challenges in your life to wake up. That's what happened to me when my dad died. I woke up. I don't say I'm pro-death, but I'm pro-death as a teacher. If you experience that, you can take it as a teaching lesson to bring you to another level. Of course I grieve and all the other stuff. I'm not like, cool, another teaching lesson here. But we all die one day. None of us are eternal — we're eternal in our spirit, but we're not eternal in this physical world. So now, when I think of death, like myself dying, I imagine myself going back home to go see my parents. It's not this scary, oh my God, what's going to happen. No, I'm kind of excited. Let's go see my mom and dad. I don't want to die for a long time, obviously, but that's how I view it. Death is really the nexus of my faith, for the most part.

Hosts: I would say, though, that that's not uncommon, actually. That is kind of the ultimate, brutal reality that we as human beings tend to avoid thinking about — that I am going to die one day, that my life is finite. And the starting point of so many people's spiritual journeys, spiritual awakenings, is that moment of experiencing the death of a loved one, or a cancer diagnosis, or a terminal illness. It is actually confronting the reality of our limits, and that starts the journey for us in a very raw and visceral way. I will save my story for another episode, but I had something of a similar experience watching my sister when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and then also confronting my own reality: if it's possible for her to die, I could die, I could be hit by a bus tomorrow.

Hosts: I want to ask — you say that when your father passed away, that was the pivotal moment for you. What was it that spurred you to look at our faith with such a holistic kind of view? When I hear you talk, there is this gratitude and respect that you have for your parents, and not everybody had that growing up. What were you really wrestling with? Was there a point where you were angry, where you were mad, where you wanted to give up? How did your journey unfold from that wake-up call?

Shinghi: During that time, I was a teenager. Oh, my parents don't know anything, I know way more than them, I should go do whatever I want — the really rebellious, normal teenager. I rebelled against all unificationist values and all those things. My mom, who was dealing with an incredibly sick husband and then two rebellious teenagers, couldn't deal with it. She couldn't do it. So I actually got sent to a boarding school called Blessed Teens Academy, which is a unificationist boarding school. I kicked and screamed the whole way there. There were even times when she'd be driving, she'd stop at a stoplight, and I'd just open the door and run. I'm not going to this thing. I just did not want to go. But my mom, in her heart — she told me this many times — was feeling like she was losing everything in her life. She was going to lose her husband, and she was going to lose her kids. Not lose her kids in the physical sense, but in the spiritual sense. Everything she understood and wanted to build in her life and her family would be lost in one generation.

Shinghi: I think many unificationist parents have that same worry in their heart. The way they express it may be very different. If you don't, as a second-generation unificationist, recognize what their intention was, it can come off as very regimented, rigorous — oh, they don't love me unless I'm within this. But really, their intention is thinking in generations, their intention is for this multi-generational family. Anyway, so I went to BTA. It's a very funny boarding school — it's more spiritually focused. I don't even know how to describe it, but it was an amazing experience for me. I hated it for many years; I loved it. I look back on it like, what a cool way to go to high school. You're with a bunch of, like, 40 or 50 kids your age, and you live together, and you're experiencing being a teenager in that time, and you're fighting with each other, but you're also thinking about your faith and life and principles, all these other things. So it was enough of a little bit of a wake-up.

Shinghi: My dad died the first year I was there. My mom basically said, you should come home for a little while, because I don't think your dad has much longer. So we came home, and I was at least cognizant at that point. I was like, okay, let's read the Principle to my dad one last time. So we just read the Divine Principle — there's a red section, you can kind of speed through it. My dad's last words to me were, be all you can be. That's what he wanted. When he passed away, I kind of took it like, hey, you have this intention for my life, and these principles — I'm going to give them a shot. That was my heart and my intention at that time. Afterwards, through his death and wanting to search for spirituality and search for him, it led me to the Principle, and to actually think about it in my life and apply it in my life. Any religion and faith is very conceptual until you have someone on the other side. Oh, there's a God and there's a heaven — but until you know somebody over there, it's kind of hard to relate to it sometimes. So me connecting with my dad was connecting with God.

Shinghi: That's another beautiful thing about what we believe: our parents are really God's representatives, because God is just like our parents. He's a parent. God is a parent. So when I view my life of faith, it's through connecting with my parents I'm connecting with God. That's the relationship. Even now that my mom and my dad are in spirit world, it's like they're almost one thing, and connecting with them is one thing. So I was a rebellious teenager, and then kind of came back and found my faith. Ever since then, I always tell people two things. Number one: second generation are A/B testing our faith. If we're intentional, and we're having a true hypothesis and a true test and control group, then we're in the test group; the control group is the world. If you follow the world, and the end goal is happiness — that's your success metric, happiness — what I wanted to do with my life was, I will be the test group, to see if I can create a happier life through these principles and through our faith than if I was in the control group, which is the world. I'm 33. I think I'm winning. I think the test group is winning, because I'm so freaking happy in my life. I feel so fulfilled. And I have so many goals that are not just for myself. They're not just centred around me. I want to have a multi-generational family. I want to make enough money to do something for the world. I don't want to have a huge house somewhere. I want to do something. That's my goal in life.

Shinghi: The reality is that the Principle will guide you to happiness, and things that are unprincipled will guide you away from happiness. There may be some temporary happiness — drinking sounds fun for a while until it's not, until you're an alcoholic and it ruins your life. Dating around sounds fun until it's not, because you're losing this ability to have a deep relationship with one person and build a family around that, without these ties to all these other people that you built these relationships with. Having children — someone asked the other day at a little event, if you could relive one moment, what would you relive? And I was like, nah, I don't want to go back. I want to be now. I'm here now. My life without my kids doesn't sound great. I'd rather have my life with my kids. And I just had my fourth, so I want to be now.

Hosts: Congrats. Welcome to the club.

Shinghi: Thank you. We had three boys, and we got to have at least one girl. So truth is reflected in reality. In my A/B test, I'm seeing that truth is reflected in reality. Even the understanding of having sons and then having a daughter — completely different experiences. My daughter's three months old, but it's completely a different experience. Coming back to: we want to experience maximum happiness. You have to experience all the things that God experienced in God's life. God created Adam and Eve. God had a son, God had a daughter. So don't you want to experience the same thing? And in our view of the world, essentially what we're doing is we're reuniting God with God's family. What we're doing is trying to live lives so that God can enjoy our families as if we were the original Adam and Eve. For the first time, that's what God is experiencing through us. I think those experiences are even so much more meaningful if you think about it in that way. So that's the A/B test.

Shinghi: The other one, going back to V1, is that you have to separate the church as a corporation from your life of faith. If those two things are the same, you're going to have a hard time, a bad time. Because the church as a corporation is run by people like me — imperfect people who will make mistakes, who will want promotions, who will want all of these things. To me, especially for people who don't have a corporate background, when I look at the church, it's just like, hmm, it's just like a little Amazon. There are little kingdoms. You've got kingdom buildings. And ships that flow upstream. Sprints. Products. If there's bad news that doesn't go back up — all this stuff is just the result of the corporation. Branding and marketing department. So if your faith is attached to a person in that corporation, then it's not your faith. You're having faith in something that is not true. That's where I don't really care what happens — I care what happens to the church, but it doesn't affect my faith. And it's not bashing the church as a corporation, because the church as a corporation is just trying to build the structure to keep the Principle alive for many generations. That's what it's doing, and trying to help people understand what it is. So, not bashing the church, just acting separately. This is my life of faith. Oh yeah, this stuff's real. They're just trying to do their best over there. Okay, cool. We're good. And it's not going to work for every single person, just like every product. You run a company that is a very specific product base. You're expanding a little bit, but for the most part, it doesn't serve men, for instance. It's primarily for women — fertility, menstrual health — and you're not going to market that towards men. So, for instance, our church is very family-oriented. For people who don't want a family, it might not appeal to them particularly, because it's literally in our name and all over our marketing.

Hosts: I really appreciate that, Shinghi. A lot of people maybe don't understand 100% why you would work for a religious organization, because it is so flawed. I've heard this from other religious groups as well — we're not unique to this. But I tell people the same thing: my faith is not affected by my job. Of course I support the organization, because I believe in the principles and the value of it, and I want it to survive beyond one or two or three generations max. I want to see what it can become 100 years from now. I won't be here to see that, but maybe I can leave it a little bit better and make it a little bit easier for people to relate to. So I appreciate you bringing that up.

Hosts: I'm really glad that you touched on that, Sungmi, because there are a lot of perceptions about working for the church — that your whole life becomes that. As people who work for the organization, maybe we especially have to have a little bit more of a grounded perspective, because it then becomes so hard. When you really care about something, it's a lot harder to take the criticism. It's not that you're a yes-man, support-the-party kind of person, but having that distinction of, okay, my faith is grounded in my experiences. Thank you for bringing that up.

Hosts: I'm just very impressed by your overall — you have a really great way of looking at the picture from a 5,000-foot view, more wholly. Sometimes when I talk to friends, there is so much pain caught up in the expectation of their parents, what they should have done, or how they longed for them to be. It's not to deny that hurt or those yearnings, but it's really hard to step outside of that pain and to look more wholly at your parents — even to think more objectively about what is it that my parents were trying to achieve, without getting caught up in the emotional turmoil of the hurt. What is something that you feel has contributed to you being able to have that kind of perspective?

Shinghi: Again, death is such a powerful thing, because it's so much easier to be resentful to people that are alive. Even after my dad died, my relationship with my mom was always like, she's going to die one day. I would take a picture of me and her and my kids, and in my mind I'd think, I'm going to look at this picture and she's dead. So there was this moment of, I don't want to have resentment in my life. I don't want her to go away and have me be resentful, because I can't achieve maximum happiness if that's the case. The steps to get there — we think of them as the Three Great Blessings, which are: be fruitful, multiply, and have dominion. As an individual, even in the being-fruitful part, the parent-child relationship is the fundamental relationship in all of our lives, and is the relationship that's a reflection of our relationship with God.

Shinghi: A lot of us second generation — and I'm sure I did this in my life — it's easy to say, oh, my parents didn't unconditionally love me, they were conditional on what they wanted me to do. But if I turn that around and go into their shoes — and I am a parent now, and I sit in their shoes — their intention is for their children to experience the most incredible happiness. And that happiness, through the lens of the Principle, I don't want to say there's only one way, but there are material steps you have to take, and they can be screwed up. Some of those mess-ups are eternal mess-ups. So they're very careful in guiding us, especially in this world, which is the control group, and is very different in terms of what the world is promoting for what you as an individual should be. So it's a very hard battle that they were fighting. My take is, you can never expect unconditional love from your parents — you're setting the wrong expectation. But what you can do is give them unconditional love, by forgiving them and understanding that they are as human as you are, and they're doing the best they possibly can to love you with the tools that they were given as a child.

Shinghi: Our parents are very different. They've taken such a leap in their life that is so different from the way they were raised. They materially changed their lives, and they were not perfect. But if you can really sit in their shoes and understand their intention — at least my parents' intention for my life and my brother's life — it makes sense. You can make sense of it. The biggest problem I see with a lot of second gen is that if you leave the Unification Church, it's very hard to come to terms with what your parents intended you to be. Because if you just say, oh, I don't believe in the faith, I don't believe in any of this, and you go try to live your life, you're basically trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. It just doesn't work. A lot of people get stuck there.

Shinghi: Again, the Principle leads to maximum happiness, and part of that is — it's not an optional thing — you have to either forgive your parents or build a relationship with them where there is no resentment between you. Because otherwise you cannot achieve the greatest level of happiness that you possibly could in your life with that thing there. And then the last piece is: you think you're so great that you're going to be a better parent? That's the beauty that all of this is teaching. By showing that you love your parents, and you forgive them for how bad they were or their mistakes in their life, you're teaching your children to forgive you for the same thing. How can you expect your children to forgive you if you don't forgive your parents? All of this stuff just adds up over time. You're building walls to happiness. That's it.

Hosts: And he's upset at his dad, blaming his dad, saying, oh, it's because of you she died. And the grandfather's telling him, forgive your dad, because one day you will need to ask forgiveness from your son. That's a really powerful message that you don't hear a lot in this world. There's an anti-parent streak in society right now where it's like, your parents don't know anything, cut yourself away from them, estrange yourself, because they didn't know how to parent you, you need to do it yourself. It's a really dangerous streak, because then you don't learn forgiveness, and you don't learn to ask for it either, from your own kids. Especially dealing with teenagers and that really difficult time with kids, you have to have that skill set, at least the grain of it. Because if you don't, it can breed this deep resentment that can live the rest of your life and into regret when one of you isn't here anymore.

Hosts: Maybe, yeah, maybe he's not so bad. And after this time — probably more than a decade of knowing him — his heart softened. He would no longer call him the Schwiegersohn, the bad son-in-law or something. He wouldn't use his name. It takes that long-term thinking. I don't know another group that does that intentionally. Maybe the characters in Dune or something — but that's in a science-fiction novel. In this world, how rare is it to have a group of people who are all looking for this multi-generational healing, and that it takes a lifetime — that is the life's work: the healing and the building, and hopefully, like you said, trying to achieve that maximum happiness. But knowing that, you know, maybe in our own marriages, or in this one generation of relationships, it's not going to be perfect yet, and there's still some work to be done. So much of society now is starting to wake up to it in pieces — all these tools that are coming out for self-healing or for re-parenting yourself. But unfortunately, it's still in this isolation. Like you were saying, Shinghi, you want to make this work as a family, together. We look at it as, I have to do this for me. But actually, we think about it as, I have to do this for my children, for my grandchildren, for my parents, for my ancestors. We were thinking, like, 20 generations back, something happened, and I need to help heal that by being better, by supporting stronger relationships. Maybe our listeners can write in and say whether they know another group that does this, that thinks about it that way. But it's so holistic.

Shinghi: It fundamentally comes back to: we believe God is working through everyone, through all religions. We don't believe God isn't working with the Jews or the Muslims, or the other Christians or the Mormons. God is working through literally everyone. God has never stopped working. If our story of the Bible is a story of one family that's restoring and constantly working — we don't believe that Jesus came in and God just stopped. Like, that's it, I'm just going to chill out until he's back. No, God has always been working. Even the Blessing — I look at the Israeli and Palestinian conflict today, and people say, oh, we just need more bombs to solve that conflict. But the reality is, we need the Blessing. That's how I do it. This comes back to my A/B test. How do you heal this? The only way, if you want true healing, is — this is kind of an odd thing to say — you have to have Israelis and Palestinians marry, and you come to the point where they have grandchildren. And those grandchildren, just like you experienced something, can feel that resentment that they have for one another. There is no other way, in my mind. And maybe that's single-minded, but I don't think so. It's not even a new concept. Kingdoms used to do this — a king would marry their daughter into another kingdom in order to create peace and prosperity between the two. So it's not a brand-new concept either.

Shinghi: The way I think about it: the world has soldiers, and soldiers are willing to go and die for their country, and we honour those people who are willing to do that. The Blessing is a soldier who's willing to sacrifice their life with somebody else who maybe is not the best fit for them personality-wise, or whatever it is, but they're willing to sacrifice their life for this greater outcome, which is their children and generations to come. That's really powerful. In my mind, that's not a strange concept. It's a very powerful one. Going back to resentment, you have to have that mind that this is the goal of what they were trying to achieve. It all makes a lot more sense. It's a lot easier to forgive your parents for their issues if you understand this original intent. These are people that should be honoured for the most part. They have their faults, but they sacrificed so much for this greater concept of world peace. I sometimes refer to our church as the responsibility church — the take-responsibility church. It's not just about the individual and my healing and my peace. Our church is about understanding God's heart. God's heart is that God sees all of his children in this world, and they're suffering. So God can't be happy and experience maximum happiness — I couldn't be happy if one of my children was suffering. How could I be fully happy if that was happening? God has the same heart. So with the true reality of Reverend and Mrs. Moon, they're people who took responsibility for the world. I'm focused on taking responsibility for my family. They're people who took responsibility for the world. That's how I understand them, and that makes a lot of sense to me.

Hosts: I love that, because my sister and I were having this conversation a while back, really digging into, what is original sin really? We can talk about it from the concept that's in the Divine Principle, but in our experiences, what is it really, and who is at fault? You can trace it all the way back. A lot of people say it's Eve's fault, and that's why women have been really stepped on. You can go back and say it was Lucifer's fault. By that same token, you can go back and even blame God. But what you touched on — maybe the greatest thing about our movement is not that we have all the answers, but that our founders are teaching us to be willing to take responsibility as if it was their fault. Like, wow, God, you are hurting so much, I want to do something to fix this. How many people are willing to take on the blame or accusations in the name of serving others? There aren't many people in this world that do that, really. To me, it's one of the most beautiful things of our movement.

Hosts: You talked about when your dad died, you went seeking him through the Principle. For people who don't know, our main scripture is the Exposition of the Divine Principle. You could call it cliff notes of Father Moon's teachings. And Mother Moon, who is now our current leader, is expressing things in a different way — more feminine aspects of God and of our teachings. I wonder what faith and spirituality look like for you now, as a dad of four running a business. I know you're involved in other projects as well — you're a very busy guy. Do you have time to study the word, or what is it that keeps you inspired to still be part of this movement, inspired with your spirituality?

Shinghi: Honestly, it's the practice. It's going back to the A/B test: seeing truth reflected in reality. The beautiful thing about the Principle is, it's not very complicated. It's really simple. In life, I don't think truth should be complicated. Truth should be simple to understand. It should be comprehensible, and it should be achievable. Would God create this world where you could not achieve the maximum happiness? That's the reality. Be fruitful, multiply, have dominion. Be fruitful: be a good individual, have self-reflection, develop your own spiritual life, develop your personality and your desire to maybe want to do something in the world. Multiply: get married. Find someone you share a common value and a common mission with, and then have children. Have as many children as you possibly can, as fast as you can, with this person. And then experience the joy of creation through your children. You are experiencing what God experienced when God had children. And it's just reflection. Looking at Ari, my daughter — she just smiles, and it's the best thing in the world. Truth is simple.

Shinghi: And then after that, have dominion, which I view as: add value to this world. How can you add value to this world greater than yourself? Don't be a taker, be a giver in some way. You can take, but you can give back. Even all that multiplication — after becoming a dad now, my next goal is, I want to become a grandpa. So to me, my faith right now is in practice mode, for the most part. It's seeing it reflected in my life, and seeing how grateful and how joyful I am in my heart because of it. You would think, oh, that's really nothing new. But the intentional part of it is new. Just intentionally living that life with those goals, while taking responsibility in any way you can for this world, is truly beautiful.

Shinghi: Even the concept of original sin — what we believe in the Blessing is that you're taking away the original sin to reunite with God, to become part of God's family. And through that, what does that give you? I think what that gives you is this freedom, in a way, to reunite with God, and to let God experience your life. We have this concept in the Principle of returning resurrection, which means that if you die, you can still restore parts of yourself that were unrestored in this world through returning and supporting individuals like myself as a spirit, to guide them in some way. I had this great experience with my mom, where after she passed away I was laying down next to Alden, my second son. I just felt this desire to cuddle this boy and to love this boy. And I could feel my mom coming through me, almost, and just being there for him. So it's so powerful in that — again, my faith is very simple. It's not complicated.

Shinghi: The other thing I love about the Principle is that it is not exclusionary. It's all-encompassing. It's a framework for everything. I agree, we're in V1. So do we have, like, a How to Be the Best Parent book, or How to Be the Best Husband book, or how to go through these issues in life? Nah, that's like V4, V5. We'll get there. But the tools and the framework we have is the simple truth to understand the purpose of our lives, and to live that life and to experience it, and it will bear fruit. That's the reality of it. If you do it, it works. All the happiest people I know in my life are people who are in the A/B test, not in the control group. So it's fascinating to reflect on.

Shinghi: The other piece, too, is just — God, life is short. I'm 33. My dad died when he was 62. My mom just died when she was 72. I could be halfway through my life today. So the reality, and I can also understand the desire of my parents, is: you have such a short time to get it right, to experience that maximum happiness. Of course, the beautiful thing is always forgiveness. There's always a path back. But you really have such a short time in life to get it right and to experience all of these things. I post on Twitter a lot about this. In the ideal state, I think if we were in an ideal society, we should have children at 16. We should get married and have children at 16. That sounds a little crazy. But what does that enable you? If you were 16 when you had children, and your children were 16, and it goes on and on, you would experience 12 generations in your life, because you'd have six before you and six after. If you talk about being raised by a village or being raised by a big huge tribe, that's how you get there. Even me — I'm 33, I'm done at 33 with four kids. But if I had kids earlier, it would have meant more time with their grandma. So when you have kids later in life, again, the Principle is simple, but there is a time constraint. It means less time that your children have the possibility of experiencing their grandparent. And coming back to a maximum-happiness person — do you want them to have more love units in their life or less?

Shinghi: So there's a tiny component to the Principle, which is: you have to figure it out. And it's so simple — what's that saying? A caveman could do it. Like the Geico commercial.

Hosts: Even a caveman can do it.

Shinghi: Exactly. It's a beautiful part of faith. It's not complicated, and it's very simple, and everything is very logical. Even our concept of spirit world: we believe that you go into the next world as the person you are today. If you live a life that is full of joy and giving and happiness, that's what you get to experience in this next world. If you live a life where you've murdered people and people are resentful towards you, that's the life you unfortunately have to continue living. That's the cause and result. So in our own physical lives, we have to do our best to live these incredible, amazing, happy, joyous, giving lives — and I'm not doing it so I can go live it over there, but doing it because it's great. It's freaking fantastic. And it's simple to understand. A little rant there.

Hosts: No, I think that's a great reminder to leave our listeners with and to leave us with. Thank you, Shinghi. I hope everybody can take these nuggets of wisdom, especially about how to live life fully and in the time that we have. We're so grateful for you coming on and sharing your story and sharing your wisdom with us and with our listeners.