Sermons should be given with the same intensity of feeling as a woman who is in childbirth. You must focus all your attention there. When you stand before the podium, you must feel like a pregnant woman on her way to the delivery room. If you reach that level, you need no preparation. The content of your sermon is not the issue. The issue is whether your heart has reached that level.

When you give a sermon, if the members know you have already given a sermon with that title before, they will not like it. It is similar to the desire of people wishing to feel the change of seasons. People are not always happy just because it is morning. There are days of depression even when there are few worries.
Even though it is such a nice and invigorating day, you can still feel depressed. Then what do you do to get over this? If there is no stimulus to help bring about this change quickly, go and find a more depressing place. By going to such a place and putting yourself into an environment that is contrary to yours, you can find new stimulus. You can also supplement your current state by creating a new stimulus through which you can directly overcome your situation. If you cannot find solution s and manage your everyday life, you will not be able to offer spiritual guidance to many others.

If you give an ill-prepared sermon and no one receives inspiration from it, even if you give all your strength and there is still no result, you must come back and spend some time wailing regretfully. It is a shameful thing. You must feel ashamed. That is how you develop yourself.

You may want to say on Sunday, “Where in the Bible shall we read from? Break out the hymns! Break out the Holy Songs!” Do no t do this. This is not what you should do. Center your worlds on your knowledge of people; use real life resources and relate them to comparable passages in the Bible. Give an interesting sermon that compares personal experiences with the content of the Bible. Then the mind of that listener will be completely blown away. When he hears about his own experiences, he will like it. Do not attempt to do it by looking at books. Books come from people as well. You must know that people themselves are the original books.

Church leader should undergo many hardships. They should go through a lot of life training. They need to experience the lives of a poor laborer, a beggar, a top executive, even someone with the highest authority. Then, with all those experiences in such a public position, your testimonies will be more real.

I spend more time praying for members than praying for the sermon itself. I pray with sincere investment: “Heavenly Father! What must I do to raise these people? Is it this or is it that?” Then I give the sermon as my mind directs.

If you have an intimate relationship with God, do not worry that you did not prepare for your sermon. You need that kind of experience as well. Even when I meet famous people and must speak up to ten times a day, I must talk about different things each time.
But do I prepare for each and every one? My heart at those times is to completely have the consciousness of an offering. There is no “I.” There is no concept of my existence. There is no sense of having possessions. Heaven is with us when we stand a position of absolute dedication. (1028) –34

Even when you talk through the night, you should make it interesting. When you talk past twelve midnight until two or three in the morning and you think, “I wish they would leave. I should get some sleep.” They would all run away. Even when it is three or four in the morning, you should be thinking, “I hope they do not go. I wish that time would stop.” When they return home after experiencing that situation, their spirit will realize how important it was. They will feel sorry and, immediately after eating, will want to go back. I have been working in this manner.

Whenever we meet anyone, we must not think this is the end of things. Especially if we meet someone centering on God, we must never forget that relationship. Even if that person stops coming to the church, you should not cut him off or despise him. Even if that person falls away, you must never abandon the relationship that you have made with him.

Therefore, never be discouraged if a member falls away. When a member falls away, a very interesting phenomenon occurs: A person who resembles that person’s character, speech, and even the way he walks, will join the church. From every angle, the new person who joins amazingly resembles the person who fell away, and yet he is much better. When you see such a phenomenon, you can understand that sincere investment and prayer are never lost. This is an absolute fact.

If there is something bad, do not get rid of it right away. Even if there is something bad, you should deal with it, having the flexibility and capacity to find some conditions that will improve it while you keep the bad aspects on hold. If a person is cut off due to a mistake he made a year ago, then he may spiritually die completely. But if he is kept for one, two, or there years in the belief that the mistake is a secondary consideration, then after that time there may be a way for him to live.

If you love the members who have just joined, then they can quickly set the condition for indemnity. The reason the church is not able to make progress is because this is not being done. This is the reason why God said to love each other and live in harmony.

How many members with longing, yearning hearts have you met? I have met numerous such people. They visit from the ends of the earth to bow before me. Why is this? It is because I have already thrown the line of love, bonded in heart, to the ends of the earth, and because I have already sent an electrical current through it, they know the direction they have to go. That is how it should be.

To become a leader, you must truly stand in the position of the doctor who cures the sick. If an ill person’s spiritual situation begins to deteriorate, you will have to make an effort to cure that person’s heart while you shed tears day or night, oblivious to time. That is a spiritual leader. How many nights have you stayed up trying to save lives? How busy have you been trying to save lives? If such deeds go up to the spirit world with you, then you will be the object of commendations and you will be the object of commendations and you will set an example of good character. (1023) --30

We are historical pioneers. The pioneer must break through difficult surroundings and advance with a prepared attitude toward a hopeful tomorrow.

Once you take the responsibility, the next thing is to fight and struggle. You must go through a struggle of life and death. In that battle, you should lay the foundation to bring at least three people who opposes you to natural submission during your lifetime.

You must first have ideological knowledge and then faith that it will work. If your thoughts and faith do not come up to a certain level, then you cannot claim them and they can easily be taken away by someone else. The foundation that I have accomplished and strengthened, and the ground that has roots that are firmly planted, can never be taken away except by the application of a strength and faith that is greater than them. (1020)

What type of heart must you have before taking on responsibility? You must have the determination to exchange your life if you cannot accomplish the responsibility. In that case, a solution will emerge that resolves the core of the problem.

When you can say, “I have done all that I could have done as a human being. Day and night I have offered my entire heart and extreme dedication.” And God can see you are leaving after having done everything you could, even though you could not complete your mission, then God will return to you in excess of your effort. You should know these things.

It is not easy to be the teacher of the Unification Church. It is extremely difficult. It feels the same as wearing a prisoner’s uniform and walking toward the execution chamber, and yet I am walking that path. You probably do not understand because you have never spent time in prison.
I live in a well-appointed mansion, but I do not need it. I have been trained to live in a hut. I can just as easily live there. I have trained myself to become the best laborer; I can remove my jacket and work on a construction site. If there was someone in prison whom God loved, then I trained my heart to hold on to him, maintain complete dominion over the environment, and become a friend with whom he could shed tears. (1021)

You should feel the same longing heart of longing for members as you felt for your first love.

You should stay up all night making devoted efforts to raise core members. If you can offer this effort for three days, they will bond with you and feel grace that will stay with them throughout their lives. If you witness with strong determination, feeling that time is too short, and become anxious when your guests leave because it is late, then the spirit world will cooperate with you.

You must first be absolutely dedicated to God’s will in order to convey it to others. (1022) --29

Those who way they go to church for someone else’s sake, for their beloved sons and daughters or for their beloved husband or wife, will not be able to go further. They should go to church for God’s sake. You should go to church to attend God as your own God and to find God’s love as your own love. (1012)

One does not start out as a central figure with confidence. I, too, have never thought myself as being confident. I realized that before I liked myself, I had to like God and I had to like the one whom God was seeking. How to possess this kind of heart was my endeavor. If I have that heart, there is nothing that is impossible. You must have a mind to make people happier and console the sorrowful person. (1019)

The true shepherd does not say he is the true shepherd. He always quietly embraces God’s will and the entire universe in his heart and goes out; he does not make excuses. (1019)

After working hard for the public purpose, you might fall asleep without realizing how tired you are, and yet in the morning you would wake up totally refreshed. From this experience you realize, “Ah, this is the principled way of life!” But if you think, “Well, I slept only three and a half hours last night. Therefore, I should sleep at least six hours.” your entire body will feel as though it weighs a thousand or even ten thousand pounds and you will have pain all over. That is why I tell you not to have such thoughts.

A leader should not be the first to lie down no matter how tired he may be. He should lie down only after everyone else has lain down. He should be the last to finish praying. Even in his life of faith, he should offer devotion without food, clothes, and shelter. Such is the position of a leader. If he can live that way, he will not perish.

I am at a loss for words before a devoted person. As leader of the Unification Church, when I am considering which of two people is better, I do not take into account who is handsome, but rather I look at the direction of their mind. In other words, I see whether their mind is public or personal.

Even when you take your first step in the morning, you should think whether or not it is for the public purpose. And when you go to bed after finishing your daily work, you should reflect on whether or not the day was spent for the public or personal purpose. Furthermore, looking back at the past twelve months of your life or your entire past life, you should reflect on whether or not you led a public life or a personal one.

The person who is in a public position is pitiful. What if, even though he does his best, he makes a mistake in following God’s will and a thousand years of merit goes wrong? He lives with such a serious heart.

We cannot drift along day by day as months pass. If we are not focused on preparing for the new day’s advance, then we will become prey for vultures here in the wilderness. (1020) --28

I’m not saying that you should force yourself to lay down your life if you do not want to. I’m saying that you should joyfully be willing to do that. Would God want you to lay down your life if you are totally miserable doing so, or would He prefer it if, intoxicated with love and not knowing whether you would live or die, you danced with joy while laying down your life? Which would He prefer? (994)

In the face of the great, historic Last Days, what more could we ask for than to become trustworthy object partners before a lonely God, whose position is one of being unable to trust. Even death will not worry us. Even if our flesh turns to water and flows away, or becomes powder and disperses in the air, how can we be resentful? There have always been many lives with no value that end up like those of pigs and dogs. (995)

You should not complain. There is no room for complaint. You should not think of yourself. Think about God with the heart, “If I complain, how much pain I will cause the True Parents! I understand their circumstances. If the moment comes when I can inherit their tradition, I will inherit it and while following them, I will comfort them.” Then, if you shed tears with that kind of heart, God will share them with you. There is no doubt about that. You should shed tears for the sake of God and for the sake of the True Parents… You should know that this is the life of attendance... (996)

Don’t you want to go to the person who thinks about you? It is the same for God. The way to capture God is to think about Him more than anyone else. God seeks out those who are thinking of dedicating themselves to Him. (996)

Because I knew that God was such a lonely and isolated being, I have gone forth knowing that my mission until the day I die was to fulfill even a portion of God’s will and desire; to expand a foundation in at least one field and gather together those who can live for the sake of God. It is because I was born as God’s son and because I felt myself responsible for establishing His will that I have persevered until now with love. Even though I was persecuted, and even though I was beaten, I endured all this without taking revenge. Even as I fought my way forward, staggering or crawling on my belly, I always thought about how to set up this tradition and bequeath it to the world. (998)

What should you do to receive the love of the Parents? You must love everything that is loved by Parents. Only then can you receive love from them. In a family, if a son wants to be loved by his parents, he needs to understand that he can only receive love from them when he loves everything that they own. If someone wants to receive love without doing this, he is no better than a thief. If a child claims everything that is valued by his parents just because he wants to, he cannot receive love from them. (1000)

When I talk about my hardships, you should think of them as your own; you should be able to feel the same—your heart should ache, you should be in sorrow and in tears, you should feel mortified and angered. My suffering is the raw material you can use to feel the same way. (1003)

Living in attendance to God/Our attitude of attendance

There is no need for a verbally established parent-child relationship or a parent-child relationship that was created through written agreements. When you exert your mind, express your devotion, and live for the sake of the Father’s will, you can even endure pain that melts the flesh and bone. When you do this in order to win victory, you can restore the parent-child relationship with God (987)

You should know that God exists near you and is concerned about each of you more than anyone else. People think that the love of their own family is the greatest in this world. However, you should know that God’s love is deeper and greater than that love; it is deeper and greater than any human love in this world. You should be embraced in God’s love and be able to call Him, “Father.” You should become such true sons and daughters who deeply experience God’s internal heart in a position that says, “I know the Father’s sorrow.” If you can become such sons and daughters, and possess the Kingdom of Heaven in which you attend God, no one would be able to take that kingdom away from you. (988)

When you are happy as people who are attending God, how happy have you made God? Have you attended God with a gratitude that is greater than the feelings you have as you eat when you are hungry? You should always feel grateful to God when you eat or wear something nice, even when you are sad or facing difficulties. Hence, you should leave behind good circumstances that can be remembered in God’s mind. (989)

You should become the sons and daughters who, from the valley of tears, can receive a response when calling for the Father. You should become the people who, when you call, “Father!” from a place of tears, He will reply, “Yes! I am here.” When you call, “Father!” from a place of piercing pain, shedding blood and sweat, He will reply, “I have endured, so you can too.” When you call for Him even at the moment when death approaches, He will reply, “I am here, be at ease.” The question is how much you attend the Father, how much you consult with Him and how much you live with Him in such situations. No matter how hard you call the Father from a place of self-centered glory it does no good because the Father has still not seen His day of glory. (990)

How many times during the day are you aware of God’s existence? How many times during twenty four hours do you feel God’s presence? How can people who are determined to be saved through attendance, attend God just one or two hours in a day? God is something you need more desperately than even the air. God is something you need more desperately than even water. God is more precious than your meals. Yet, do you really feel this? (991)

Why do we listen, and learn these things and live a life of attendance? What is the purpose of our suffering for six thousand years? It is for the sake of understanding God’s circumstances and His heart just as the Bible showed. It is for the purpose of understanding that God related to ethnic peoples and nations, as well as to individuals, with a parental heart and that He is our Father who has been wounded, trampled upon, rejected and torn to pieces. (991)

Training center of Love

If you want to repay your debt in the soonest possible future, you must choose the place. Which is the best place for you to repay all the debt-your home, your relatives, your neighbor, your church, or what? When you do it through your church, it means you are doing it through God.
Let me tell you why the Church is the best place for you to repay your debt. If you pay by means of the Church, God will be delighted in that. Up to the present in human history we find that the church has played the major role in building up culture and civilization.
If not for Christianity, do you think America as it is today could have been built? Without Christianity fifty states could have meant 50 nations. Religion and the love of God enabled them to be harmonized into oneness, with one purpose. Let me prove that.
In the Unification Church, we are one with each other, be it black or white. Here it is possible because we have the same purpose, the same goal. First we have to deny ourselves in order to be mingled together into ultimate oneness.
There's nothing like white or yellow or black in God's sight. Through religion, people talk more highly of the purpose of the whole state than they do of the purpose of smaller communities, more highly of the purpose of the whole country than the purpose of any one state, and ultimately, more highly of the purpose of God.
God-abiding churches alone can do the job of bringing oneness to all people. So, before loving the United States, you must love your church; before loving your parents, you must love your church. This is because churches have been playing the role of amalgamating or distributing love towards other people on the horizontal level. More than schools, the church has educated you in that field. Churches are the place where many activities are carried on to love your friends, your family, your neighbors, and all mankind. This is the arena of the practice of love. Seen from this viewpoint, we will choose the church as the place where we can pay our debts in the soonest possible future. How many nationalities do we have here in terms of your ancestors? You are people from all over the world, from many nationalities. Then it means if you really love America you must love the whole world. If you are strongly united into one, it is the symbol of all mankind being able to be united into one. Is there any hope for Unification Church members to become one, and to make the world become one? (Yes!)
Suppose we have members of 120 nationalities here, and one from each nationality came to you, asking for something; for instance, one would ask you for your finger to be cut off for him. Would you do that? (Yes.) Then you will be cut into 120 pieces. That means sacrificing yourself. So, for total love and dedication, you must sacrifice yourself. That's our conclusion: You must give away your whole being. Again, we feel the depth of the truth when we read Jesus saying, "Anyone who wants to lose his life will gain it, and he who is prepared to gain his life will lose it." If you are ready to sacrifice yourself for the sake of other people, you can save your own life and you can save others' lives so that they will belong to you.
Since we are such great debtors that we have no way to pay back all our debts, why don't we be ready to sacrifice ourselves; it is better to sacrifice our lives than to remain debtors. In a word, I tell you to love others as God would love them, but that doesn't come to you in the concrete sense. But God showed His love towards mankind through your parents. So, you want to follow the example of your parents in loving others. Your parents have loved you more than they would their own selves. You must love your brothers and sisters and all mankind as you would your own self. That will solve the whole problem. Then you will repay all your debts and still leave something behind. The purpose of our life is to pay back all debts and then leave something behind in terms of transmitting our love to others. Our conclusion is the motto we are always chanting, "Let us strive forward with Father's heart, in the shoes of a servant, shedding tears for mankind, sweat for Earth, and blood for Heaven." In that way alone, we will repay our debt and leave something behind. If you live your life in that way, you are entitled to the Heavenly Kingdom.
God would be anxious to educate you in that way, and your own parents are anxious to educate you in that way. However hard they may study other tactics, there's no other way possible than this, and no better way possible than this. Every moment you are loved by your parents, friends, teachers, and relatives. That very moment you must think of transmitting the love to others, with interest added so that you can love others all the more. If you are a debtor you cannot lift your face; you are not free in your thinking and acting, you are humiliated. American young people look so liberated, so free in doing things. It is because they don't realize that they are debtors. Only after having repaid your debt can you feel free to think of things and say things and act out things in whatever way you wish, and that will meet God's standard. While you are debtors, if you act arrogantly, people will point to you, calling you names, reviling you. We have the mistaken idea of our not being debtors in the golden life. If you are sure that a certain person, the least, especially in the western world. You become hippies and you hate people. In that case you are being utilized by satanic power. Satan is undermining this country through you.
With the knowledge that you are debtors, you cannot sit still without paying the debt. If you really know that you are debtors, can you lead an easy life, and enjoy life, without paying for it? (No.) So you must be agonized and uneasy every moment. If you find yourself able to repay the debt, that would ease your heart a little bit. So, as a debtor, there's no other way possible to be happy than by repaying the debt. As I said before, the best place for you to repay your debt is the church. You are now here in the Unification Church for that purpose. Our method of repaying our debt is to make the whole of mankind into one family. There's no division of families, clans, tribes, or nations in our movement. The whole world is one. All people will want to belong to us.
Why do you admire me and love me and want to belong to me? Briefly speaking, you know that I know the true way so you want to ride on me to go to for instance your parent, loves you and is willing to carry you on his back to the goal you utilize him and he is willing to do the job. So am 1, and God is that way all the more. But if you want more speed, I want you to go ahead of me, even. I will stay here, being what I am. But you go out to the local churches, states, and other countries to occupy that territory for God; you will be in the vanguard, and I'm behind you. You are going to experience a bit of everything I have experienced. You will be reviled by the people, be placed under persecution and difficulties, and you will know what I have gone through. But are you going to complain and feel like escaping from the situation? (No!) That is because I have never wanted to escape from the situation, and you are going to follow my example. By my going through bitter experiences, I have paved the way smooth for you to go. In that sense, you are indebted to me. The way for you to repay the debt to me is to do the same, following my example. Then you can pay it back to other people.

The only way to repay the debt

There's a way open here. Jesus said, "Whatever you do to my little ones, in that way you are going to repay me"-something like that.
Your ancestors and all the rest living in spirit world as creditors would want you to repay your debts to the whole of mankind and to your own descendants. Starting from your own family, if you repay your debts by loving your brothers and sisters, by loving your parents and relatives, friends and neighbors you reach other people.
For instance, a river or stream always flows downward. The size of the river doesn't matter, big or small it flows downward. We too must flow down, filling other people's hearts.
Up to the present, you were never aware of being a debtor or how to repay your debt. Think of God and how He worked His providence of restoration even after we became debtors, transgressors.
We named many to whom we are indebted, but more than your ancestors more than anyone else, we are indebted to God every moment of our lives. What would God want you to do to repay Him?
God's only wish would be for you to repay the debt towards other people, His own children. Your parents' wish is for you to love your brothers and sisters more than you would your own parents. The same thing is true with God. God as the parent would want you to love your brothers and sisters more than you love Him.
In God's sight, all of mankind are brothers and sisters, so He would want you to love all mankind. Your parents would want you to love your offspring.
More ideal is that you love the whole of mankind more than you would your own descendants, doing things for later generations of mankind.
What God wants you to get is not knowledge, position, or wealth, but love to give to other people. You know that you would love your children naturally, as you would your own parents. With that same kind of love you must love other people. That's the only thing God would want you to do.
Your parents would want you to be successful in life so that everybody around you would praise you and admire you, then they can be proud of their children.
They would want you to love your brothers and sisters as you would yourselves, to take care of them and help them to be equally successful. So you can see divine love in your parents' love toward you.
If you are sons and daughters of filial piety, would you not want to carry out what your parents want you to do? So, you want to be able to love your brothers and sisters, your parents, relatives, friends, and neighbors, as you would your own self, and you want to be successful in worldly careers without using evil tactics or things like that, but rather by using goodness and heart. In choosing your mates, you want to have your spouse like that, too.
Let's go back to the main point. We are aware that we are all great debtors. And now you have learned how to repay the debts. Repay means pay back.
But your creditors wouldn't want you to pay back the money to them, but to pay it to your descendants and people around you. In God's love, everything good and valuable flows down, like water flows downward filling up any shallow places, and when it is on level ground, it covers the whole space. That's the only way possible for us to repay. There are two ways to repay your debt: on the horizontal level towards all mankind; and vertically to your descendants.
You must always be thinking how to repay the debt, what to leave for mankind and what to leave for your descendants.
An artist would want to leave a masterpiece of his handiwork. Your leaving something means you transmit your love to other people.

Upon the ancestors’ blood, sweat and tears

What about your teachers at the school where you were educated. You ignore their love towards you, but if there's any teacher who loved you so much that he cannot forget you, then you are one of the persons implanted in his memory. You can never forget that kind of teacher who loved you so dearly. So from our birth, we are indebted to our parents, and secondly, we are indebted to our teachers who educated us.
Fallen men must be indebted to some person, either the church minister, the church itself, or the church members. Your church minister cannot save your soul without loving you more than your parents did, on a higher dimension.
Also you are indebted to your country. Especially Americans must be grateful to their nation because in this country of affluence, you have been enjoying your life while others are starving to death. The government is protecting you by exercising the law, and if you do violate the law you are always protected and cared for by your government.
You must also be grateful towards the whole of mankind. America could not have been blessed with affluence like this without other nations. By means of imports and exports you earn money, and use it for the benefit of your people. The American population itself is composed of people from all over the world. Here we have black people, white people, and yellow people living as citizens of these United States.
You think you have built your own culture, your own civilization, but your forefathers brought things from other countries. Even at this very moment businessmen are drawing money and materials from other countries for the benefit of this nation. So you are indebted to the whole of mankind.
And you are indebted to your ancestors. Think of your forefathers, who founded this nation. How much blood and tears and sweat have they shed? But for their struggle and labor, could you enjoy life in the United States? Could you ever become hippies and drug-users when you think of that?
If you were starving to death you could not become hippies. You have more than enough to eat, you are degraded spiritually, you become lax, you hate life, and you hate yourself when you become hippies.
When you don't have any money to buy drugs, how can you use them? Your forefathers worked so hard to make an environment for you to enjoy; are you repaying your ancestors that way? Being great debtors like this, how can you repay all the debts?
If you lead a meaningless life just drifting like a fallen leaf, you will die away without repaying your debt. You will remain a debtor in the spiritual world. Then would you be well received by God? (No!)

Parents’ love is great

Seen from this point of view, we are greatly indebted first to our parents. But have you ever seen a parent who would ask you to repay that debt? There is no way possible for us to repay the debts we have to our parents.
What does the mother do after childbirth? She has to change the diapers. And if a rash appears, she has to medicate it. If you are sick, your mother stays by your bedside, just caring for you and nursing you. If you were at the brink of death, she would pray that she might die in place of you. That's parental love. Have you ever thought of that? Your parents are a symbol of sacrifice for you. There's no comparison to the parental love toward you.
Every morning your mother is anxious to get you on the way to school before it is late, and prays for you and begs you to be a nice boy, a nice girl, to behave yourself well at school, and be a good pupil. She warns you against misconduct and misbehavior and things like that. Every moment of her life, she is anxious for you.
As time goes by, you will grow bigger and bigger, reaching adulthood, but even when you are in the university, she won't cease to care. Is there any parent who would want to be indebted to their children? No. Until the time of their death, they want to care for their children, not thinking of any debt. They are the greatest of all benefactors. So, in terms of love, you are, have been, and are going to be indebted to your parents until your death.
Suppose your parents are somewhere around 100 years old, and you are 80 years old. Still your parents think that you are their children. We often hear this story: 100- year-old parents, if their 80-year-old son is going out driving in the car, would say, "Be careful driving the car. " So, that love lasts for eternity, without changing.
I say for eternity because, even though they pass away into the other world, they will keep loving you and caring for you.
When I think of this, I must let you know that the greatest of all loves is parental love. Suppose there's a young mother who died leaving a young baby. Would you think the mother will have an easy heart and say, "Well, I'm glad I'm relieved from the pain, here in the spirit world?" Or, would she love the baby and care for her all the more? Her love, in the spirit world, toward the orphaned child is more than she felt on Earth. In that case, the baby must know that she's being cared for by her mother, to a larger and higher degree. Your parents, wherever they are, are those to whom you must be grateful.
There's no way possible for us to repay the debt to our parents. In a word, you are all indebted to your parents. You are going to be indebted to them all through eternity. So you must be loving children to them. If you love your parents one-tenth of their love towards you, then you are 90 percent indebted to them.

Let us repay our debts

We received our body from parents

My topic today is going to be "Let us repay our debts." Let us closely study whether or not you have debts.
Before your birth, you inhabited your mother's womb for at least nine months. I have witnessed in Mother how long she struggles when she's conceived with a child. For three to four months, you feel like vomiting whatever you eat. You are physically feeble, so you may need more help and more love from your husband.
The baby in the mother's womb is making the mother suffer, and through the mother, he's mobilizing even the father.
Even though you are experienced, just before childbirth a mother is scared, because labor is frightening. At the moment of childbirth, the mother can die. When she's in labor, you just cannot imagine how agonized she is. She has no one to rely on, no one whom she can really trust or lean on. You did that. Every one of you, when you were in your mother's womb, caused that.
So, you are greatly indebted to your mother, to your parents. You are the one who caused the pain and pangs.
But right after the childbirth your mother felt overjoyed to see you. Immediately, she comes to love you. If it were in other matters, you would hate and feel like kicking the person who caused you such trouble and pain.
If you were given every three years the same pain as your mother experienced when she gave birth to you, practically everyone would be faithful to his mother.
Have you ever stopped to think that you caused such a pain to your mother? (No.) You feel free to say anything against her, act any way against her, and you think that you are born for the sake of yourself.
In your everyday life, suppose you are hungry and almost starve to death, so you visit a friend of yours and he feeds you; you are immensely thankful to him. When you are in a difficult situation, if you are helped by one of your relatives or friends, you are grateful. But have you ever thought of the pain you have caused your mother and have you been grateful to her? Compared to the gratitude you feel towards your friends, what you should be feeling towards your parents must be many, many times more.
Before being born into the world, there was the period of time when your eyes had to be formed, your ears, your nose, your mouth. Every cell of yours was being formed in your mother's womb.
So every morning when you look at yourselves in the mirror, why don't you remind yourselves how your eyes were formed, your nose came into being, your mouth and ears came into being. When you closely examine your face, you will find that your eyes resemble your mother's, your ears resemble your father's, your nose resembles your father's again, and maybe your mouth resembles your mother's mouth. They are a copy of either your father or mother.
How can you misuse them? To you, your faces are precious; if that is true, why don't you talk highly of your mother and father? Why don't you feel that they are precious to you" Your whole body, every cell of yours, belongs to them and resembles your parents. If you love yourselves why don't you love your parents?

How to develop your spiritual senses

If you long to see someone, even if a wall is placed to stop you from seeing that person, where will be occasions where you climb over that wall.
Such things will happen even if I keep quiet. This is because the spirit world fills up that gap. When I was imprisoned in Heungnam prison, I did not witness to people with words. I witnessed to people without words. The same holds true for you. The spirit world was mobilized to help me, because otherwise something terrible would have happened.
The same holds truth for you. So, if you are going to the countryside, you should mobilize spiritual support in the same way. I have been to every well-known place in the sixties.
Think about who you are going to meet today on the road. Think about what kind of person the first person you meet will be like. What about the second? What about the third? At the same time, you should pray to God, “What kind of person will it be? I would like to meet such and such a person today.” You feel good if your thoughts and prayers come true, and through such experiences your spiritual senses will develop.
When that happens, as soon as you go out on the street, you will start feeling you are going to meet such and such people today. A person’s spirit is able to connect with others without limit. You will be surprised if your intuition on what kind of person you will meet that day becomes reality. There are many instances in which what you think and the intuition given by the spirit world will often become reality in perfect accord with each other. You have to grow through the accumulation of these experiences. (30-150)

The course of spiritual experiences

Although we may be in a position to worship God who is the center of our faith, our position is unclear. Then where should we start looking for that position?
Although our subject partner is established, we cannot feel it. We cannot conclusively distinguish such a spiritual thing as clearly as we perceive thngs with our five physical senses. When we consider from where we should begin approaching this problem, we understand that we cannot start by looking into the subject partner. We could not possibly start by looking into God Himself. We should, to that end, begin looking into ourselves first.
Each individual has a mind and body. Aothough we have both mind and body we cannot, however, begin to seek within ourselves for this position centering on our body. Only by centering on the mind should the examination be carried out.
When we observe fallen people today, whether a thousand or even ten thousand, do we see that their minds are the same? Although the root may be the same, the minds differ depending on the nature their environments.
Not all are the same. Why? Our faces are different, our habits are different, and the emotions we feel are different. In the same way, our horizontal line and the perpendicular line with which we can form an angle is different. We must have the angle set correctly.
Then how should this be done? With heaven as the subject partner, we should stand as the object partner before that subject. God, the subject partner, has surely given humankind the foundation to respond to Him as His object partner. Therefore, contained within that foundation of the horizontal mind there must be a standard for the mind to be perpendicularly oriented in a direction toward the vertical. That direction surely exists.
When you look at a horizontal line, it looks like a plane but when it stands perpendicular, the standard for that perpendicular line will be different. How do you adjust to the zero point? If you go this way, there will surely be a counteraction. Therefore, you have to adjust to that zero point. In a power plant there are many different types of meters. Each meter has something similar to the zero point from which direction, power and quantity are measured. There has to be such a zero point standard.

What kind of standard is that? It is something that exists and yet does not, or something that does not exist andyet does. There is such a place. Those who practice Zen meditation use the term ecstasy to refer to a state of mind similar to that. You should be able to approach a spiritual level of that kind. Once you reach that standard, you will find something that would surely enable your horizontal standard to respond.
There is a gate in your mind and it is called the mind’s gate. It does not open in just one direction. Since your mind rotates, the gate moves as well. Without going through such a gate, you as a minus cannot establish a relationship with the plus. Everyone has that kind of mind’s gate.
When you pray, you get a different feeling depending on the time of your prayer. Prayer at one o’clock is different from prayer at three o’clock. You will understand this when you experience it. If you pray in a deep and mysterious state, you will know that your prayer will be different depending on when you pray. It will feel different. What you feel in the morning, at noon in the early evening, and at night are all different. 　
Likewise, the level of our feeling within our state of mind differs in the same way our physical senses respond differently to the changes of the four seasons. That is how it is in the realm of our mind. So you should know the best time to pray. That time will be when the degrere of your response to God is greatest. As you continue to delve into that sphere, you will find the gate. When the gate of God and the gate of your mind become perfectly one and revolve aroung a certain standard, you will find the path to fully experience what God is feeling.
What should you do to reach this state? You need to cultivate your mind. Some religiouns have expanded in step with God’s providence and others in step with Satan. Since these religions are all mixed up, it is extremely difficult to differenciate the good and bad.
The same is true within the realm of our mind. There are good minds and at the same time evil minds. Your mind may think, “Yes, I am good.” But that thought itself is not good. Our minds were formed as a result of the Fall. Consequently, there are some whose minds are influenced by evil and the evil realm of Satan, and others by goodness. There are all types of minds.
Then what is of utmost importance? The way you set the gate to your mind is the most important matter in your life of faith. Therefore, in your life of faith, always be alert to those times when the gate of your mind opened and how to tune it to the gate of God’s mind. Always be prepared for this. You always need to have a mind-set in your daily life of seeking and adjusting your mind to God at any given time.
Therefore, be constantly aware of the depth of your mind and try to open the gate to your mind. Then try to adjust it to the place where the gate of heaven is located. This is the most precious thing to do in your life of faith.
As you gradually come to stand in that ofject position, what happens? You will experience a new three-dimensional feeling that you never felt before. You will somehow come to experience that unknown feeling.
In the past, you may have experienced only a wintry sensation, but you will start experiencing the sensation s of no tonly autumn but also summer and spring as well. Why? The universe is rotating and so is our mind. Just as the rotation of the planet causes the four seasons, the realm of mind in motion naturally allows us to feel the changing degrees of sensitivity..
There are four seasons in a year. A day, however, is a year in miniature. There are also four seasons in a day. The morning corresponds to spring, the noon to summer, the early evening to fall, and the night to winter.
In this way, there are four forms of seasons in a day. There are also four seasons in the morning which corresponds to spring. You can have springtime, summery, autumnal and wintry feelings even during just the morning. Just as large units are divided into sub-units on a large scale, small units are also divided into sub-units on a smaller scale.

Our mind is like that. In other words, the feelings your mind experiences are not always fixed. According to the seasons, it would be good to know that you correspond to spring, but you are unaware that you correspond to winter. You should, therefore, know how to discern what the present time corresponds to by having a variety of experiences and through an abundant life of prayer.
　
Once you are in such a state, what kinds of phenomena happen? In Korean there is the word ahmshi (a hint). By an example you can understand its meaning; a person casually walking along happens to see a bird fly off from the wall of a beautiful house; even after the bird has flown away, the observation of the event implicitly teaches a lesson. Such phenomena will occur.

Such phenomena will start taking place in your actual daily life. The number of these suggestive conditions will increase. You will derive insight into something as you happen to overhear someone talking. Such experiences will increase gradually.
　
Once past that stage, what kinds of phenomena take place? You will start receiving revelations in your dreams, but I am not talking about the ones during deep sleep. Saint Paul experienced the third heaven while half awake.
Do not let such phenomena pass you by inadvertently. Compile and analyze the datascientifically to find out what they are trying to connect you to. The result will surely come out. You will gradually experience that the revelation s you had in your dream—which you can hardly forget—will turn out true 100 percent in reality. You will have such experiences.
People or things you connect with in the half-awake stage of your dream are going to appear in reality. You may think you experienced having sung a song with someone in a dream, but in reality you were not dreaming, you were actually singing that song with someone at your side. Such phenomena will happen. What this means is that your mind has entered a realm in which it resonates with the spirit realm like a tuning fork. You should regard such things as very precious.
Then, what will happen next? As God exists, where will He appear? God will appear not in the air but through your mind. Why have not you been able to experience that? Because your mind is not yet firmly established in its own existence and because you have become people who are being dragged around by your body. Once your mind is firmly established within its existence and forms a higher dimension of character whereby you can declare it to be another subject entity, the situation will surely be different.
When you reach a higher level through prayer, you will start talking with your mind. A state of resonance will occur. It will be on a higher level, and you will physically hear what you are saying in your mind. You will advance to that kind of state. During the first stage a hint or suggestion in your daily life will be given.
Therefore, believers must collect the vast amount of such facts. When coming into contact with people, do no ttreat them offhandedly. Always wonder if they can teach you something. Always be hungry in heart. Have a seeking heart that expects to receive something from those people. After all, what is the self? You are always either a subject or an object partner in a relationship. It means you are in a fixed position either as a subject or an object partner.
Therefore, when a being appears who can become your subject or object partner, you will know it immediately. If you have people to witness to, you will easily know what kind of people they are. Your mind would go to them out of joy, by way of thought waves. Every mind has its own wavelength. A butcher smells of meat and a dealer in fabrics smells of cloth. Just as your body has its own smell, your mind has its own unique smell. A form of sensing the smell of the mind will take place.
Our body has something similar to the sense of touch that makes contact with everything. Your mind emits something like invisible electronic waves to look for its own object.
Therefore, believers must think that everything is in a reciprocal relationship with them. Why is that necessary? Because we have lost all kinds of relationships due to the Fall. The Fall severed our ties with nature, with the original human being, and with God. In order to reconnect the world of the severed relationships you must always endeavor to get yourself connected. Those relationships can be pioneered only when you take such action. Without such an attitude, you will never succeed in pioneering in a relationship.
All of you must have the heart that is seeking something. After praying in the morning you should be able to sense that something good will happen that day. Do not think that something good will happen on its own course, but actively start looking for whatever it is. This type of attitude is what you should have in leading a life of faith. Therefore, feelings, experiences and putting them into action will bring life to you. All this occurs during the half-awake state.　
　
If your spiritual level goes higher, what will happen? You will start receiving revelations and directions. You have to analyze revelations. Directions are given directly to you by someone, but it is different with revelations—which is why they lead to problems. You must always interpret revelations. Some revelations come verbally and others visually. You could have a vision of a couple of deer drinking water from a spring and then glancing at a mountain in the distance on a nice spring day. Such a vision symbolizes boundless hope and happiness. All such phenomena will take place.
Such things are not accidental. Heaven is doing this to help you to cultivate the field of your mind. Why does it have to be so? The field of your mind is not flat, like a sheet of glass—it is uneven. It is in the form of a flat surface but the shape itself is uneven. So when a heavenly ray hits the uneven plane of your mind, it will be reflected towards a direction opposite to the incoming ray just like the refraction of light. Visions, therefore, are all different. God works in such a way to enlighten each part of your mind.
　
After the stage of revelations, you enter the stage where you have experiences such as those found in the Book of Revelation. In this stage you enter the spirit world and have various experiences all day long; you get connected to a far-off world. You can reach the limits of state where you feel God in your daily life. Unless your faith is based on such experiences, you cannot apply the resultant realm of God’s great will to the field or sphere of your daily life. Therefore, believers without such experiences cannot be trusted. Faith based on such experiences is important. For this reason, you must make an effort to enlighten yourselves.

While our members are praying, spiritual phenomena are taking place. Such things called spiritual phenomena do exist. The spiritual forces enter our bodies like electric power. You would know if you had these experiences; you will experience a force stronger than your normal awareness entering your body, as if you were in contact with high pressure. When you experience super natural and superhuman emotions, your body will certainly reject them, since your body carries the fallen nature. Your body will surely come to repel this divine nature from God.
Therefore, if some kind of godly nature flows strongly into fallen humankind, fallen people cannot be purified in a natural way. When this power flows in, it does not come in at once but enters in an alternating plus and minus manner in the way sound waves are transmitted with alternating amplification s and attenuations. This power comes in sometimes strongly and sometimes weakly, all the while cultivating us. You will have vibrations, lose your consciousness, and the phenomenon in which spiritual forces act strongly takes place. This is manifested as spiritual phenomena.
What will happen next if you continue having such experiences? Your physical body and your physical fallen nature will become purified, and through this you will naturally come to accept these works 100 percent. When that happens, even without such phenomena you can enter a state higher than the spiritual phenomena and then receive all that heaven teaches while not being overwhelmed at all. You have to go through these courses to reach that level of purification, as well as the phases of receiving revelation s and directions.
Once you reach the level of such experiences, your mind will give you directions. You will be struck dumb when you try to talk to someone, or you will scold someone in spite of yourself. You will experience such incomprehensible phenomena from time to time. Therefore, you have to be able to control them. If you mishandle the situation, people may treat you like a crazy person.
It is absolutely necessary to go through such a course of experiencing these things. If you enter the position of having had experienced through the trials of life, by feeling and experiencing that which entered your mind, you will become stronger. You will not be affected by anyone’s comments. Understand that both spiritual experiences and their realization are of the utmost importance in your lives of faith.
What should we do to enter that state? Generally, there are two types of people. The first type consists of so-called intellectuals, who search for truth. They only accept things that stand to reason and reject anything contrary to it. The other type consists of people who grasp things by feeling rather than reason. In the Unification Church they are called the intellectual and the spiritual people respectively. Whereas intellectual people look for external understanding first and then try to apply it to the internal world, spiritual people look for internal feelings first and then try to apply them to the external world. We may call the former the incoming type, and the latter the outgoing type. These are the two types of people.
Since that is the case, intellectuals generally do not like prayer. When they think about it, it looks like superstition, it cannot betrusted, and it makes them feel that their own existence is going to be denied. Those are the intellectuals—they seek to find truth by forming theories. Spiritual people, on the other hand, are born being fond of calling on the name, God. They just like God for no particular reason and do not require any explanation. They do not mind skipping meals as long as they can call God, Father. Such people exist.
Generally speaking, in spiritual movements, which type of people do you think are successful in creating a revolutionary movement? Intellectuals cannot do it. Those who have accomplished great things in the realm of faith were not intellectuals but were mostly simple and uneducated—they were spiritual people.
They live true to their feelings and do not care about the world. They do exactly what God tells them. There will arise occasions in which what they are doing turns out to be exactly the right thing to do in that situation. As a result, they turn out to become great figures in history. Saint Paul was originally an intellectual, but since he was struck by spiritual lightning from heaven on the road to Damascus, he changed his mind and went on by faith instead of his head. He felt that by searching internally one found an explosive path rather than by searching externally, which led him to deny everything that was external and to start respecting things that were internal. Through this, he became a standard-bearer of the new Christian revolution.
Such being the case, those emphasizing reason cannot play a role as great leaders of the religious world of the spirit. There are two types of people. You should know which group you belong to. Spiritual people in general are usually not great at reasoning, though they are great spiritually. They may start out strongly, but they become weak later on. Then, since they are not consistent from beginning to end, they do not last forever—they surely drop out at a certain point. On the other hand, those who are good at reasoning and truth but poor spiritually can also never last long. Therefore, you have to make an effort to coordinate these two aspects in your daily life.
It is said that you must worship in prayer and in truth—in spirit and in truth. This means that you have to create a balance and enter a state of harmony. People should mediate between the spiritual and physical worlds. You should stand in the center of the spiritual world and be the people who can mediate standing at the center of the world of truth. Otherwise you cannot attain the perfected position. (76-125)