Cheon Seong Gyeong 1602
You should understand that you cannot be self-centered, individualistic or insist on your own way. Before asserting yourselves, you need to realize that your father and mother existed before you, and from their lives emerged their lineage. On top of that, love was created. The relationship through which you can learn to respect lineage, history and your ancestors, and which will help you serve them, is the one between you and your parents. You need to respect your parents and then God. What would then be even higher than Him? It would be love.
Encompassed in the mother and father are the absolute love, life and lineage attained through the Absolute Parent and Father of absolute love. You should be aware of the fact that you are born from all this. Thus, you are the representative of lineage, maternal and paternal life and love. Having received them all as the representative, you were born to expand them and spread them wide; since such is the purpose of your life, if you don’t fulfill this and instead act as you please and put your greed before everything else, you would be ruined and perish.
Cheon Seong Gyeong1224
As far as I know, there is no way you can unite mind and body when rising to a high position. If you rise to the top with a lofty mindset, there is no way to be united. You must be trampled on. Even in my case, God has been trampling on me with His feet for forty years now, so that I would not rise high. Since He’s been doing that, all my aspirations to rise were stirred up and I could unite with Him. You must be cursed at, trampled upon, and mistreated wherever you go, like Kim Sat-gat who roamed all over the Korean peninsula. But even in such circumstances you must discover yourself and be able to digest everything with joy. (144-255, 1986.4.25)
Cheon Seong Gyeong
Selections from the Speeches of Rev. Sun Myung Moon
Book 5
EARTHLY LIFE AND THE SPIRIT WORLD
Chapter 2
Death and the Spirit World
Section 2. Understanding Death
2.7. Things to do before we die
2.7.6. Work for the public good
If you see a greedy shopkeeper in a market, you will notice that the customers don’t come to buy things from him. No one likes a greedy person. Everyone knows the method and secrets of managing one’s life in terms of distinguishing between private and public matters. Therefore, if you are unable to go to heaven, you can’t use the excuse that you didn’t know how to manage your life. Why? You already know the distinction between public matters and private matters without being taught.
For example, let’s say your mother distributes delicious rice cakes equally between you and your sister. You eat your share, but your sister keeps hers without eating it. Then you wake up at night and are about to secretly eat your sister’s cake, that she had set her heart on. Before you can eat it, your conscience will cry out, “You scoundrel! You devil!” If you don’t feel this in your conscience, you are not a human being. You should feel it. Why? Because your conscience pursues public matters. If you follow private desires you will perish.
Originally, for those who follow the laws of heaven, there is a mind that defends and protects them from destruction. What does it mean that it originally existed? Because God originally had such a mind, human beings came to have the same mind from the start. It is not a man-made law. Can you say to your conscience, “I do this because that’s the way I am”? If you command your conscience, “Be like this because that’s how I think,” does it follow suit? We may not know where the conscience receives its orders from, but we know it is from somewhere other than ourselves. When we see how such feelings do in fact control us, we can understand that they do so over public and private matters. (31-241, 1970.6.4)
People today struggle internally and externally at the crossroads between good and evil, and public and private, in their daily lives. In many cases, they vacillate between the two and finally fall into a self-centered, private lifestyle. Yet those who do that will perish. Therefore, they must repent for their past self-centered, private lives, grit their teeth, and push themselves back into public life. People tend to waver between these two lifestyles. They are more inclined toward living privately, and end up distancing themselves from the public good. This has been your life of faith until today. Therefore, all those with a private lifestyle must repent. (31-242, 1970.6.4)
Do you wish to receive good fortune? Do you wish to live eternally? To do so, you must become public people. In educating your children, don’t love them only as your own. Become parents who love their children as offerings for the sake of the people of the world. When holding your babies to your breasts and nursing them, think of yourselves and your babies as representatives of the entire human race on earth. Nurse your babies with such a heart. Instead of caring only for your children and their appearance, cherish other people’s children with a loving heart as if they were yours. Babies who are suckled by such mothers will certainly grow up to become great people. Such results may not surface right away, but after the first and second generations among your descendants there will be born great figures who can rule the world. This is the formula. (31-167, 1970.5.24)
Which of the two would you prefer to devote your entire lives to indemnifying: private matters or public matters? Both are devoted to some purpose. Those who stand up at the risk of their lives to devote their entire lives for the public good and public indemnity will become great people. A new history will be created by a group of people like this.
As we are facing that moment, how shall we spend the rest of our lives? This is the course of tribulation you must go from now. When you manage your life, the issue is whether you live individualistically or publicly. For whom do you eat, wear, buy and sell things in your daily life? Is it all for you or for God? The issue is whether yours is a private or public life. The question is also whether you have a private or a public mind in all these activities.
Pledge to go the public way. Anyone charged with the mission to indemnify history must advance to the stage that everyone desires. Therefore, in the course of daily life, transcending private feelings and embodying public feelings is the important issue that all people of faith must concern themselves with. What is sin? Sin arises from private standpoints. Ruin also comes about in the private sphere. Evil is the same. When private matters are pursued beyond a certain degree, they manifest evil. Private matters have certain limits; when exceeded, sin, evil and ruin result.
Then, where is the position that can be eternally good, eternally prosperous and eternally fortunate? Where is the position that can prevent sin, evil and ruin? It is the public position. Even when you eat, do so in a public position. When you work, manage from a public standpoint. When you speak, digest the situation with public words. In this way, live connecting all aspects of your lives with public matters. Such people cannot go to hell even if they try. (31-163, 1970.5.24)
pgs. 588-589