The Fourth Principle: Dedicate Your Own Family to the Global Family of Humankind

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LESSON 21: Unification and Happiness

A. Unification

1. Unification means becoming completely one.

• Becoming one does not mean losing your individuality.
  • The partners maintain their individuality and enjoy seeing themselves reflected in their beloved.
  • If there were complete merging and loss of individual identity, then there would be no reflection, no love, no joy.
  • True unification takes place on the basis of free and harmonious sharing of love and beauty by two distinct entities.
  • The greater the differences of the partners, the greater the excitement and beauty of their unification.
• Unification is based on true love.
  • It is not forced or coerced; dictatorship is false unification.
  • Dictatorship can be physical (police power) or spiritual (evil laws, peer pressure, social customs).
  • In oneness, the lover and beloved smoothly move into each other and out from each other.
  • Physical love between husband and wife.
  • The life pattern of parents and children (out from and back to the mother's arms and father's oversight).
  • The play of brothers and sisters (hide and seek, tag, etc.).
  • The workday (leaving home in the morning, returning home at night).
• In oneness, each partner identifies with the interests of the other.
  • Participation in each other's activities and lives; for example, the President's wife indirectly participates in his governing the country.
  • Living together, by which we share each others joy and sorrow, strength and weakness, sickness and health, wealth and poverty.
  • Inheritance; naturally the family possesses property in common, and the younger inherit from the elders (clothes, books, houses, land, business, etc.).

2. The purpose of unification is to multiply.

• There is a universal pattern of a common origin, a division from the origin into two partners, and the re-unification of the partners into one body again.
  • God is one. Within Him, masculinity and femininity, spirit and truth, idea and energy, harmonize in oneness. (These are called "dual characteristics" of God.)
  • To multiply Himself in the creation, God's dual characteristics are manifested in separate entities, culminating in man and woman.
  • Division is for the sake of the manifestation of love. Marxists taught "thesis-antithesis-synthesis," which is a distortion of "origin-division-union." His fundamental error was that development comes through conflict (between thesis and antithesis). In truth, development comes through love (unification).
  • These entities come together as subject partner and object partner to form a new unity.
  • This unity embodies in manifest form God's dual characteristics.
  • God's image is thus multiplied in an entity embodying, to whatever degree, the truth of God.
• Thus, the natural creative process is one of division followed by unification.
• This is the way God's purpose of creation is realized.

3. The same process of unification has to take place on many levels.

• Individual (mind-body).
• Family (husband-wife, parents-children).
• Society (teachers-students, managers-staff, clergy-members).
• Nation and world (citizens-representatives, representatives-government).

4. A unified society is characterized by:

• Interdependence.
  • Recognize our interdependence (we are dependent upon the people who bring the bread to the store, bake the bread, grow the wheat).
  • Gratitude for the labors of others that sustain us.
  • My value is that of the whole society, as my contribution benefits the whole.
  • We sense the pain of those who suffer, because we feel God's parental heart.
  • We voluntarily help and support those in need.
• Common prosperity.
  • I invest myself to develop my God-given abilities.
  • I develop my abilities for the sake of satisfying others' needs and desires. As a result, I am rewarded by others.
  • Thus I create wealth and happiness.
• Universally shared values.
  • There is agreement on basic moral principles, rooted in God. Our consciences share a common sense of what is right and true, because of our common origin in God.
  • These principles are found, with greater or lesser emphasis, in all great religions, all cultures.
  • We are drawn into cooperation to further righteousness. Righteous actions bring energy, happiness and progress.

5. Unification is the way to fulfill God's third purpose of creation, which is to multiply His own image through true love into a society and world manifesting the divine image.

6. Freedom, peace and unification are the social characteristics of the kingdom of Heaven. The result is true happiness, which is the object of everyone's desire.

B. Happiness.

1. How joy is produced.

• Joy is produced when I behold, create, nurture or have give and take of true love with an object partner which reflects and elaborates my own nature.
  • This means I cannot be truly happy by myself. I need an object to which I can relate.
  • I can have an object in my imagination, but it is insubstantial.
  • The more my object resembles me, while being separate from me, the more I am engaged by the give and take action, and the more stimulation I feel.
  • Examples of object partners that give joy.
    • The painting of an artist.
    • The finished job by a worker.
    • The children of a parent.
    • The garden of a farmer.
    • A society where I can express myself in freedom.
    • A nation where all people live in prosperity and happiness.
• The first and foremost example is God's joy as Parent and Creator when He beholds His children and all things living the kingdom of Heaven on earth.
• We also feel true joy relating with God in His kingdom.
• Evil joy can also be produced when I behold or create a reflection and elaboration of my own nature. But in this case, it is my selfish nature which I see reflected-my desire to manipulate the truth, to seduce illicit love, to be domineering and oppressive.
• Evil people want to multiply their evil and rejoice when they find like-minded people to share in their thinking and acting. In this way they justify their evil with the excuse that everyone is doing it.
• Satan is an evil power. He is committed to tempt good people away from the right path. Most people unconsciously comply with this evil power and tend to multiply it without thinking.
  • We'd rather watch TV then help somebody in need.
  • Ignoring your parents', spouse's or children's feelings and heart.
  • Investing in material goods to satisfy one's selfish desires rather than for the public good.
  • It is important to avoid associating with bad people; don't take them as friends. They will feed our doubt, skepticism, cynicism and thinking the worst of others. This results in hopelessness, external thinking, suspicion of others, short-term thinking.

2. True happiness vs. evil happiness.

• True joy is lasting
  • Evil joy is fleeting, and is followed later by remorse at a wrong done to others.
  • Thus, true joy that is brought about through benefiting others.
  • Therefore it is joy that connects with God's joy, and can make God joyful.
  • When God is joyful, I feel joyful.
• In Jesus' three temptations, we can distinguish true happiness from evil happiness. Satan presented Jesus objects which, if taken as absolute, would bring evil happiness, and Jesus rejected them for the sake of the true absolute of God's word, which leads us to true happiness.
• Satan first tempted Jesus to break his fast and eat bread. Jesus responded by upholding the Word of God.
  • Bread, money and wealth are satanic sources of joy when they are used to tempt people to deny God, to follow the appetites of their bodies.
  • Studying and practicing God's word is a source of true happiness.
  • In the context of following God's word, eating bread is good.
• Satan next took Jesus to the top of the Temple and tempted him to fall down. Jesus responded: you should not tempt the Lord your God.
  • The evil joy of illicit sex is the chief temptation that causes the fall of righteous people and religious people on the path.
  • It is true joy to overcome this temptation and establish true, God-centered manhood or womanhood.
  • When consecrated by God in marriage, sex is good.
• Satan next offered Jesus worldly power; Jesus responded by affirming that we should serve God.
  • To enjoy worldly power, lording it over others, is evil happiness.
  • Many people are driven by selfish ambition for power rather than by the sincere desire to serve others.
  • Actually, position should be understood as an opportunity to serve the people. The godly person gets true joy from serving God and the people, who are God's image.
  • Confucian saying: God is the voice of the people.
  • Roman motto: "vox populi est vox dei" (the voice of the people is the voice of God).
  • The Bible: God hears the cry of the oppressed.
  • Power is good if in service of God and the people. This creates true joy.

3. God's happiness, the ultimate purpose of creation, is realized through a world of freedom (His image), peace (His love), and unification (expansion of His image and love). This is also the world of human happiness, the reality of one great family in heaven and earth.

4. To accomplish one great family in heaven and earth, we should understand the nature of spiritual life and the spirit world. We will begin this discussion in our next lesson.

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MEANINGFULL ENCOUNTERS