Cheong Seong Gyeong 845
Parents first think about their sons and daughters when going through hardships. Then, what is the deepest concern of people’s hearts? You have to know how to find people of misfortune and strive to raise them up to your standard. When you do this, the entire world may oppose you and treat you with contempt, but God and heaven will admire and protect you. The spirits centering on God in the spirit world will go around protecting you like a cloud. Such a person will not perish. When this happens, the clouds will sweep away the entire circumstance and sort it out. Thus, you can create results in equal measure to how hard you work and how much you have invested. Although you are persecuted and suffer hardship, heavenly fortune comes behind you and lays this foundation. Saints were persecuted in their times, but in the following generations they left behind their names. Such phenomena occur because the spirit world, heaven, and heavenly fortune make it this way. (207-99, 1990.11.1)
Cheon Seong Gyeong 1722
All of us are seeking after God’s world of love, the source of His love. All beings are on their way to possess the male and female organs. People are on their way to become God’s partners in love. Isn’t this the flawless view of the Principle? This is not some theory I thought up arbitrarily. It refers to the principles of the great way of heaven and earth. (288-334, 1998.1.1)
Subduing the Desires of the Flesh
ALL RELIGIONS AGREE THAT THE SEEKER of Ultimate Reality must restrain his or her desires and subdue the passions of the flesh. Striking and weakening the body through rigorous self-control, fasting, sitting hours at meditation, etc. are all commendable ways to struggle against the flesh’s desires and ultimately to dominate them.
For most people, the most challenging of them all is sexual desire. Jesus taught that we should be ruthless, “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out…” to which we add a Buddhist story of a nun who did just that—to quench her counterpart’s sin, not her own. Buddhism promotes the technique of meditating on “the loathsomeness of the body” as a bag of fluids, lymph, bile and feces to help men curb their desire for the opposite sex. Father Moon also recommends summoning up an attitude of disgust for the body, calling it “Satan’s dance-hall.”
Related passages on self-conquest are found in Chapter 12: Self-Control; yet perfect self-control is nearly impossible to attain. Father Moon explains this predicament as a consequence of humanity’s impaired condition after the Fall. Extreme and forceful practice is required to do what does not come naturally. Therefore, religions developed to teach the path of intense and unrelenting efforts at striking at the body and subduing its desires. In some religions these practices became organized into monasticism; nevertheless people in every walk of life should be making efforts in this direction.
1. Extinguishing the Desires of the Body
Beloved, I beseech you…to abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul.
1 Peter 2.11 Continue reading “Abstain from Passions of the Flesh that Wage War Against the Soul”