Speeches of Hyo Jin Moon 2006-2008
Delivered Sunday at Belvedere Estate in Tarrytown, New York
Hyo Jin Moon Speaks on Can True Love Be Addictive?, Page 42

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Can True Love Be Addictive?

February 26, 2006

How are you doing? (Good.) That's good. Today, how should I put it? I want to talk about something interesting, "Can True Love Be Addictive?" How can we make true love addictive?

When you talk about addiction, I guess, people have a kind of negative connotation right off the bat, right? Why? Because it's a kind of human behavior, or a human action that if you get addicted, ultimately in the end, you go out of control. It's a human behavior that cannot be controlled. That's the general understanding when dealing with the addiction factor. Is there good and bad addiction? Do you think there is such a thing? Does every human behavior demand a certain outcome in the end? Whether you demand or not if it happens it results in consequences, consequential action. Is that right? I guess so.

So what is the nature of addiction? As a parent, you know, when your children are growing and running into teenage years and you see all sorts of stuff happening out there, you worry about that factor. You worry about children going out of control. That's the most important thing as a parent, a concerned parent, who has children growing up and reaching the teenage years. These are the years when they are constantly exploring because they need to know. First they have to figure out what their limitations are. But in a free society there are many treacherous things out there whether you like it or not. Many times children's greatest argument to their parents is, "How can I know my limit if I don't try it?" Based on that kind of argument, everything starts. And how are you going to stop them? If you are truly concerned and if you think that you can be a good parent, how are you ultimately going to have control over your children? You know you need this control until the day they can be free to choose and be what they can be, all they can be. Until that day, you know, you will never rest easy. You know, even when people are old, say you're 80 and have a 60 year old son, you still say, "Hey, be careful when you cross the street." This kind of silly stuff people always make jokes about. But that really does happen, maybe in a different way but with the same magnitude, that's about it. With the same intense, how should I put it, intent.

So, how do you deal with that kind of reality when every action can be turned into an addiction? Because think about it, addiction comes from nothing but an action that gives you some kind of pleasure, that's about it. That's the nature of addiction. There is some kind of action no matter what it is, if it gives you certain satisfaction, certain pleasure, however stupid or however great it might be it doesn't matter. It's just based on your limitation, that's about it. But to you, it becomes addictive because you feel the pleasure. But not everybody's the same, right? Some people look at certain things in certain ways. Somebody looks at the same thing one way, the next guy looks at it in a different way. Take the cliché of 'glass half empty or half fuIl.' So based on that kind of reality, the addiction factor is part of life. Why? Because it happens. Because you want to feel joy, you want to feel pleasure. At the final point in our life we question whether that intent was good or bad. But think about it. Who are you talking to? Are you talking to yourself, are you talking to somebody else? Are you talking to a certain community? Are you talking to a Hollywood crowd or are you talking to neo-capitalists? They each have a different perspective when it comes to self-pleasure. Even just on a geographical level, people's pleasures are all very different. For those of you who grew up in the South or Midwest of America, I mean, I like, I used to love hunting. Only reason I stopped it is just because I didn't want to do it anymore. I had my own reasons and I didn't like to kill anymore for my pleasure. That's about it. But people do, people do that stuff, and they get a whole lot of richness out of it.

As a father, you wait for a son to grow up, reach a certain age and then take him out for the first time and you guide him to shoot a deer. And when the son scores, that's a life-long experience, that'll last until the day you die I guess. And that's the kind of momentous kind of stuff that you look for in having that kind of union with your own kid, based on your preference, I guess.

Now, when you talk about love, what the hell is love anyway? What is true love? If you can forgive the devil himself and bless people at the same time, you know, yet the primary ancestors can be cast from the Garden of Eden for their sins. That is the kind of promise in the extreme of love. And love is nothing, it's just a concept. How the hell do you make a concept into something that is actually, you know, in actuality means something to you and affects your daily life? What is true love? True love is law, law of something. What is that? Law, what is that something? It's God's law, right? It's God's idea. It's God's concept. God's will. And we have to somehow figure out God's concept, God's will, the idea, the pure thought and then put it into practice. You can't practice a certain concept unless you have a counterpart. That's the thing. You can't really love because ultimately in the end, love too has to bring about joy, pleasure and happiness. That's why you have to manifest things, right? So everything that can be manifested has a certain law that is somehow correlated to the law of God, and God is the God of true love we say. So be it.

So how do you take that concept and make it work in your life? You have to question that. How do you feel joy? How does one become addicted to something? What happens in that process? You know men have to be macho right, individual, independent, self-sufficient. You try your best to be subjective and be forthright in your own ways, and you try to show the world that your decision is better than the other guy who's next to you. So how do you go about that process? Obviously you start with a need, right? You need to feel something. And you have a goal called expectation. Expectation is a goal, that's about it. I want to be this because I need this, but the goal is over there and I expect to be there one day. So you create, you give yourself the opportunity, you train yourself, you give yourself a routine. Routine is nothing other than orientation toward what is required. You start with a basic requirement and you move upward, and then it depends on how far you want to move up the ladder. This is inborn, why? Because everything in the physical world has to show itself. When you say 'merit’—it's nothing other than that physical manifestation, and people judge you by what you manifest. And then you try to make that into some kind of habit, habituation. You want to make the routine into a habit.

I'll talk about something else. There is something else in between that I think is important for us to try to pursue, to try to be addicted to true love! Normally what happens in a secular world is that they go right to habituation, you try to make that into a habit, you make the routine into a habit. When you get habituated it is nothing more than thinking that you are going to get pleasure in the end of the same stuff that you did to experience joy so far. You want that addiction factor. You want your action, every action that you have invested in your life to have. Some sort of self-gratification, pleasure factor. This is very important to you. So, it's easy to see addiction as the stupid stuff that people get addicted to and go out of control. But there are many, many other things because anything in action absolutely has an addiction factor in the end. You give somebody a little power, they go crazy, they change. I've seen it many, many times. You give people a little bit of money, they do stupid stuff.

So, what is it, what are we trying to define? What is right and wrong? Before we talk about right and wrong, you have to truly talk about what your addiction is. Because when you talk about right and wrong you are putting yourself in the position of judgment which you really don't want to do. Trust me. Even if you are a politician, try to do that and you are not going to be a popular politician, how's that? So, what is your limitation? You have to understand your limitations. And you have to understand why you want to feel joy with that particular stuff. Why do you need that stuff to feel joy, to feel that you are somebody? Why is that important to you? You have to answer that. Not just to yourself, but to your family, to your society, to your nation, to the world, ultimately to God and forever.