Cheon Seong Gyeong: Episode 64

Cheon Seong Gyeong Book 3: True Love
Chapter 1: The Origin of True Love
Section 2: The Origin of True Love, 17-35

 

(17) What is the difference between false love and genuine love? Once false love begins, it diminishes and becomes weaker. Once genuine love begins, it increases. True love keeps increasing until it embraces the world. This heart that is infinitely embracing, this heart that holds everything, says, “I will embrace more. I will embrace more!” It is only true love that activates the original heart like this. Only true love does this.

(18) There is no end to love. There is no end to parents’ love. If a man and woman devoted themselves to their child, feeding and dressing him or her well, and raising him or her to be successful internally and externally, and then the child died, those parents would never feel they had done all they could for the child. Even after giving something good, it is the way of love to feel it was inadequate. After giving something good, love never boasts. It bows its head and is humble and quiet. The original nature of true love is giving for the sake of others

(19) What kind of love is true love? The original nature of true love is not to focus on first receiving for one’s own sake, but on giving first for the sake of others and for the whole. True love is a love that gives without remembering having given and continues to give. It is love that gives happily. A mother feels love and joy
in her heart while nursing her baby. A filial son feels joy while making sacrifices for his parents out of love. 

(20) True love is love that exists for the sake of others. True love wants the beloved to go higher than oneself. The nature of love is to want one’s beloved spouse and children to be greater than oneself. This is the way it is meant to be in the human world. We want our loved ones to go higher than our parents, to go as high as God. God is the same. He loves the people who are in a reciprocal relationship with Him more than He loves Himself. He invests and forgets. This is God’s original love. 

(21) It is not the nature of original love to expect others to live for us. But when we seek to live for the sake of others, love multiplies. Love focusing on oneself diminishes, but love for the sake of others multiplies. It keeps growing. Love for the sake of others keeps multiplying and expanding, whereas self-serving love keeps shrinking. The original nature of love is such that when you want to live for the sake of others, your love becomes greater, but when you want people to live for you, your love gradually disappears. 

(22) Real love is not giving and keeping account of how much was given. It is not self-serving. Real love exists for the sake of others. After having loved someone, can you say, “The reason I loved you was so I could be happy”? You must not go there. The person who feels inadequate after having loved, the person who feels many things even beyond inadequacy, is in accord with the principle of ideal love. But the person who says, “Now that I have loved you, you have to love me,” is not in accord with this principle. 

(23) When parents love their children, they don’t say, “We bought you shoes and clothes a few days ago and invested our sweat and blood for you, and it cost this much,” and record it in a ledger. When parents love their children, they want to treat them even better than the princes and princesses in any palace in the
world. With hearts wanting to give more, they say, “I did all I could, but this is all I can give you. I’m sorry.” Parents always want to give their children something better. This is why we cherish parents’ love. Parents give and yet feel that it is not
enough; they love and yet feel that they should have loved more. Even after giving, they still are not content with what they were able to give their children. Parents’ love connects to eternal love. That is where our tradition of love begins.

(24) Everyone wants true love, but love is possible only when we live for others. We need to serve and sacrifice for our partner. Everyone avoids a person who relates to others with the attitude, “You should live for me.” This selfish individualism is Satan’s strategy, purpose, and tool; the result can only be hell. We must live for the whole. If we live for others and for the whole and serve sacrificially, then everyone will return love to us. 

(25) Why is parents’ love so precious? It is vertical love, but it does not remain as vertical love until the end; it seeks to dwell together with horizontal love. Parental love seeks to guide children to avoid going astray, throughout their entire
lives. Vertical love is such that it always creates horizontal love. According to that principle, parental love consists of the essence of both vertical and horizontal, based on God’s love.

Because parental love has both vertical and horizontal elements and responsibilities, parents want to give all their precious things to their children just the way they are. Parents want to bestow everything they have upon their children and want to see their blessings expand horizontally. This is the original nature of love. Why is original love like this? Love is possible
only in a reciprocal relationship between subject and object partners, and this is the only way to create that relationship.

Through give and take between subject and object partners, a sphere is formed. The vertical is the subject partner; the
horizontal is the object partner. Together they make a ninety-degree angle and form a circle. 

(26) God’s love is vertical love, but it is not only vertical. It also has a horizontal quality. Therefore, God can appear in front of His sons and daughters, who are on the horizontal. Those sons and daughters not only widen the base of vertical love but also expand it as horizontal love so that, centered on the vertical
aspect, all things of creation can create a horizontal environment on the scale of the world and the universe. It is from the loving heart of God’s sons and daughters that their desire emerges to govern the world, to have possessions, and to pursue their aspirations. This is all because a vision of vertical and horizontal bonds of love lies in the subconscious of our original mind. We cannot deny that satisfying this essential desire satisfies all human desires. True love is the origin of existence 

(27) If their children were in a life-or-death situation, parents would readily expend all their possessions to save them. Considering this, we can see that life is more precious than material things. Then between love and life, which is more
valuable? Between husband and wife, if the husband prepared a treasure for his wife with the full investment of his life, she would never tire of it; she would want to keep it for ten thousand years. But if the treasure were given without love, she wouldn’t want to keep it. Thus, the value of the treasure depends on the investment of the heart. If there were one couple in the universe whose love remained unchanged for ten thousand years, their love would be more precious than life. That is why people sacrifice their life for love. We don’t abandon love for life, but we abandon even life for love.

(28) In this world, there are gems such as diamonds and pearls. Why do we call these precious? A diamond is so hard that nothing can corrupt it; thus it has the special nature of being unchanging. A pearl’s elegant sheen never changes for
thousands or tens of thousands of years; nothing can compare to it. Why is gold so great? Its golden luster never changes, even for thousands of years. Nothing can surpass that color. Because of the unchanging qualities of these things, people treat them as treasures. But there is something we would never give up, even for these treasures. Such treasures have no life. You would never give up your beloved one’s life for treasure.

(29) The first measure of value in the kingdom of God is love. It is not life, but love. That love is unique, unchanging and eternal. Based on this standard, all value is decided. Since God holds that highest standard, it has very naturally become the decisive standard. When God says, “That person is a man of character,” or “She is a valuable person,” His assessment is based on this standard.

(30) The common denominator for all beings is life. Life comes from love. So love is more valuable than life. Who is closer to the center, someone who is willing to sacrifice his love to sustain his life or someone who is willing to sacrifice his life for the sake of love? Who is closer to the truth? The one who sacrifices his life
to attain love is closer to the center and closer to the truth. This is because the one willing to sacrifice love for his life is self-centered, whereas the one willing to sacrifice his life for love is not. 

(31) Love subjugates life. Love has the power to change the direction of life from right to left. But life cannot dominate love. Then what about God, the subject partner of life and of love? Even God is vulnerable in the face of love. Even though God is the absolute standard of life itself, when He faces a love stronger
than His love, He submits to that love. If there is a power that can move the power of life, it is the power of love. 

(32) What is true love? In this human world, since we have never seen God, we say we don’t know. True love is stronger than a mother’s love for her child, stronger than the burning passion of first love, that explosive power that rushes in, oblivious to even a life-or-death situation. The love of parents, who will sacrifice their own lives to protect their children from death, is connected to Heaven’s love. Heaven’s love begins there.

(33) Even though the omniscient, omnipotent God is the owner of true love, He doesn’t want the root of love to begin with Him. He wants to place the root of love in people who are able to be His partners of love. That is why, even though we associate God with true love, God wants people who can love truly, into whom He can invest everything He has. When God invests, He does not begin with inferior things. He invests the best things first. To God, the best thing of all is true love, so He invests everything in the person who will love with true love.

(34) God was behind the original formation of the universe, but His central motivation was to set up the way of true love. He was not thinking only of Himself. Before God thought of Himself, He invested everything in a second self, a partner that could be the object of His love, and He respected that being. What was to be the substantial result of His love? It was not God Himself but the object partner into which He invested, who was made to bear the fruit of His love. This is an amazing concept. This is the beginning, the origin of the formation of the universe. In short, why did God create heaven and earth? This is a philosophical question. Why did God create heaven and earth? Of course, He created what was good to behold, but more than that, He created heaven and earth to attain a love that is
like His love.

(35) There can be no result without a cause. My mind and body came from my parents. Through the love of my mother and father, their two lives combined. Love harmonizes everything. Through true love, my mother's inner mind and body harmonized with my father's inner mind and body. The life force spreads out like a fan, and the lineage connects with love at the center. The first cause that led to my existence was not the lives of my mother and father.  Rather, it was that the lives of my father and mother connected in love, and I was born through that lineage.  From the bone of my father and the blood of my mother, flesh, and blood connected, and after ten lunar months in the womb, I was born. I had the power of the life of my parents, linked to their lineage. My origin, the fundamental beginning of "me, " is not myself. My origin is the life of my mother and the life of my father. Preceding life is love, which combines two lives into one.  The origin of all beings on earth, the origin of all created beings, is love.