Cheon Seong Gyeong: Episode 229

Cheon Seong Gyeong Book 8: Life of Faith and Training
Chapter 1: What Is a Life of Faith
Section 5: Experiences and Challenges on the Path of Faith, 14
Chapter 2: Training the Mind and Body
Section 1: What Is Training?, 04

(14)  There are times when I get in a car and immediately sense that something is wrong. At that time, I change my course. I have such spiritual or even physical sensations. These physical sensations come from deep experience through my life of faith. Similarly, there will be times when you feel like holding on to something, be it a lamppost or anything else, and crying your heart out. You must never miss these occasions. If you ignore such feelings a few times, the opportunities for these wonderful experiences will grow rare. Missing these opportunities never benefits you. In fact, the energy producing such opportunities can even transform into forces that oppose and impede you.

(15)  Profound empathy with God is a requisite of a life of faith. Through our profound experiences, we can fathom God’s character and feel the internal bond of deep heart we have with Him. Only through spiritual experiences can we feel these things. Through our spiritual life, we can experience a euphoric sense of well-being. Moreover, unless we have this kind of experience, we cannot be filled with new hope for the ideal. Despite receiving fierce persecution from the Romans, even being fed to lions, early Christians were able to persevere in their path of faith. This was not due to some abstract belief but because they had profound spiritual experiences that allowed them to transcend the hardships they faced.

(16)  You have to grievously empathize with God, who has been working according to heavenly principles and demonstrating endless loyalty toward humankind in order to realize His Will. You have to compassionately empathize with the heart of God, who has sacrificed resolutely and unflinchingly to establish His Will. In addition, you have to tearfully empathize with the heart of God, who has risen above Himself time and again to recommit to the ideal of the future, with a heart that wants to give endlessly to you.

Experiencing rebirth

(17)  In our lives of faith, we need to completely forget ourselves. As we offer and sacrifice ourselves, we need to recognize our own inadequacy. Even as we face death, we must reproach ourselves. We can accomplish Heaven's ideal of resurrection only when we become people of original character who do not boast of anything before Heaven.

(18)  On the path of faith, we need to surpass everyone in Satan's world; we cannot afford to be at the same level. Compared to them, our internal heart and character must be so elevated and perfectly harmonious that it would be difficult to imagine secular people rising to that level. Based on such spiritual development, we can enter the realm of resurrection.

(19)  We must embrace the realm of resurrection with tears of repentance. By shedding the tears that Adam and Eve never shed, we have to rise above their level. We should not accuse one another with hostility and say, "I sinned because of you. I would not have done it if not for you." We should also refrain from blaming a third party for our sorrow, pretending that "Usually I am a positive and normal person." We each need to deny ourselves and affirm those around us. Each of us must shed tears for the nation and wish for the nation to be saved ahead of us. We should also shed tears for the family and hope for its salvation.

(20)  Once we have resurrected our lives, if we advance with faith knowing with certainty that there is a subject partner, God, capable of leading us toward goodness, we must take the position of object partner. We then become one with the subject partner and embrace the meeting point of the objectives of the subject and object partners. At this point, we can overcome any adverse environment. Furthermore, however dire a situation we may face, the greater our awakening to the hope and purpose of the subject partner, the Absolute Being, the stronger our feeling that this realization will become a direct source of energy in our life course.

CHAPTER 2  Training the Mind and Body

Section 1.  What Is Training?

(1)  Training means tempering and polishing one's character. Where do we find the standard for this tempering and polishing? There are two types of people among you: external people, who amount to little more than flesh, and internal people. Taking the Fall into account, we have external fallen people and internal fallen people. Both need training in order to gradually come to resemble the character of an original person. The character of an original person resembles a child to whom nature bows and whom God kisses and embraces in His bosom. Accordingly, the character of an original person is the standard for your training.

Becoming an object partner of goodness

(2)  How much have you done for the Unification Church? Have you existed for the Unification Church or have you sought personal benefit from the church? This point, you need to know, is the line dividing good and evil. Good and evil are not unrelated; when your will deviates from God's Will, good and evil separate. Good continues along the normal orbit while evil follows an abnormal orbit. Today, there are principles of ethics and morality as well as social ethics. However, such principles don't come into play when we serve our own interests. These principles engage when we live for others. Therefore, as a Unification Church member, rather than thinking about yourself, you should think about the Unification Church twenty-four hours a day. Do not detach from the Unification Church, even in your dreams.

(3)  Unless we become good people of God, we cannot hope to form families God desires. Furthermore, unless we become good families of God, we cannot hope for a good nation or a good world. Therefore, the biggest issue for each of us is how to find the solution within ourselves. The mind and body relationship thus becomes the dividing line.

Indemnity through penance

(4)  Penance is the way to subjugate the body. This is why Jesus said, "Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it." (Matt. 10:39) This means we need to sever from what the body craves; we need to remove what the body covets.