The Third Principle: Learn true love in the school of the family

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LESSON 15: The Conjugal Realm of Heart

A. The conjugal realm of heart.

1. A man and a woman who have graduated from the children's realm of heart and brother-sister's realm of heart are ready to enter the conjugal realm of heart.

• They are capable of receiving love.
• They are capable of relating equally well to all twelve types of people.
• They are capable of self-denial and self-sacrifice for the sake of others. Therefore they are qualified to give absolute love.
• Their love is pure and their hope and vision for the future are strong.

2. Each has become God's temple.

• Otherwise, God's love cannot be present in their union, and there is no foundation for their love to last.
• They have followed the vertical ethic, being a son and daughter of filial piety, patriotism, saintliness and holiness.
• They have developed their conscience.
• They have the heart to expand their love to the community, nation, world and cosmos.
• Jesus said: love your enemy, be like God who sends rain upon the just and the unjust.
• Buddhism teaches that ignorance and attachment comes from egoism.

3. The young man and young women are destined to meet and consummate God's love.

• As teenagers, around age 17, girls become attractive and boys become handsome. The passion arises within them to seek for a partner of love. There is a sense of infinite possibility and boundless enthusiasm.
• This great power is condensed and focused into one person: their eternal life partner of marriage.
• They come together at the center horizontally, and God's love comes down to them vertically. This is a cosmic spark of electricity!

4. The value of my spouse is equal to that of the entire cosmos.

• In loving his wife the husband is loving his sister, daughter, mother, grandmother. She in loving her husband is loving her father, brother, son, grandfather. This means that conjugal love includes all the virtues of loyalty, parental heart, compassion, cooperation, and so forth. These virtues are necessary for the perfect marriage.
• In loving his wife he is loving all women in the world. She in loving her husband is loving all men. In loving his wife he is loving all yin elements in the cosmos. She in loving him is loving all yang elements. Each partner represents one half of the entire universe.
• In loving his wife he is loving the femininity of God. She in loving her husband is loving the masculinity of God.
• Conjugal love represents the unity of the cosmos. In loving my spouse we become the center of the cosmos. Our love occupies the entire universe, and the universe dances in harmony. Combined, we have the sensibility to inherit the universe and be its stewards in love.
• Their union is the full image of God.
• Their union is God's dwelling place.
• This is the fulfillment of the purpose of creation: the unity of God, man and woman.
• The entire cosmos resonates with and revolves around this central point of true love.
• From that point, they become husband and wife and then become parents as they give birth to children.
• At the same time, God participates as the vertical Parents.
• We should realize the absolute value of having a spouse.

5. On the foundation of complete selflessness, purity and fidelity, sexual love is good.

• It is the foundation for God to dwell with us and for us to become one with God and each other.
• It is the place where the miraculous creation of new life takes place.
• It is the place of greatest joy for man, woman and God.
• It demands a greater degree of love, self-sacrifice, devotion and goodness than the celibate state.

6. The young man and young woman's love should be selfless and pure (as is God's love). It must have God's Blessing. Otherwise, their love will not meet God's love. There will be a clash, a lack of resonance due to the presence of selfish desire and partial commitment.

• The vertical line of God's love and horizontal line of human love should meet at a 90 degree angle.
• Conjugal love is the foundation of loving God and humankind, and it is the foundation for God to dwell within the family. Therefore we should appreciate the greatness and depth of conjugal love.

7. The sexual organs are the place of their union, where they meet with God in a tremendous explosion of love.

• They are the most holy place of the body.
• The sexual organs should be treated as a holy temple and palace of true love. None can enter but the high priest, the spouse. If anyone else enters, the holiness is defiled.
• The male organ belongs to the wife. To let another woman use it is robbery. Likewise the female organ belongs to the husband.
• Thus, the sexual organs are hidden and kept with modesty. (Pornography is a tremendous evil, because it violates the realm of conjugal heart and multiplies this violation to the society level. This defiles the sanctity of the society.)
• The sexual organs' mysterious function is the source of new life.
• There, God's electric love merges with the couple through the forty billion cells of their bodies.

8. Husband-wife love can never be broken; there is no concept of divorce.

• Any competing love pales in comparison to true conjugal love.
• The starting point of conjugal love is God, moving vertically through the conscience to the heart to the holy place.
• Conjugal love endures even though the body grows old.
• True conjugal love deepens and grows forever in the spirit world. Death is not the end.

9. The equal value of husband and wife.

• From the viewpoint of the cosmos, the husband represents heaven, the Creator God, because he contains the seed. The wife represents the earth because she receives and nurtures the seed in her body. Therefore, husband and wife represent the entire cosmos, heaven and earth.
• In fulfilling these responsibilities, one person takes the leading role as the subject partner. The partner supports as the object partner. Usually, the man is the subject partner by virtue of his role in society, and his wife is the supporting object partner. There is a natural order that the man should have a more public role and be the breadwinner. Men are endowed with minds and bodies more fit to hard labor and to the time-space demands of public life (irregular schedule and location).
• But sometimes, the woman has the leading role and her husband is the object partner (e.g. Margaret Thatcher, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir).
• Working out disputes between the partners always honors their relationship over and above the separate interests of each.
• Women's true liberation does not weaken the family bond. Love is true liberation, and true love strengthens the family. Women can move their husbands to their way of thinking with love and service. Betty Friedan is but one modern feminist who repented of her earlier advocacy of women's "liberation" which impoverished family life.

10. The lack of conjugal love is the root of the problems of this world.

• Some couples marry as virgins, but most do not. Some couples are better than others, but there are no couples who have achieved true conjugal love.
• This is a spiritual barrier for all mankind. Because of it, many religions teach that the way to find God is to live a celibate life. The root of this spiritual problem goes back to the fall of man.
• Love between husband and wife grows colder as society progresses externally, leading to abuse, frustration, infidelity and divorce.
• Children suffer irreparable psychological and spiritual damage as a result of divorce. They lose the capacity to sustain their own male-female relationships, and are likely to divorce as their parents did.
• All manner of sexual perversions arise as people seek the fulfill their longing for conjugal love which is not fulfilled in marriage (adultery, prostitution, pornography, rape and incest).
• The failure to fulfill the children's, brother-sister and conjugal realms of heart is the result of the lack of parental love. We have never had true parents, or known true parental love. Since every child is born with the nature to receive true parental love, to receive anything less is to abuse the child. Abused children grow up into flawed parents. Thus we are a world of flawed parents and abused children.

In our next lesson, we will explore the meaning of parental heart.

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