Speeches of Hyo Jin Moon 2006-2008
Delivered Sunday at Belvedere Estate in Tarrytown, New York
Hyo Jin Moon Speaks on Memories, Page 262

Some episodes may contain explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

Memories

February 11, 2007

Good morning! 

Another week has passed. For most of us, a couple of thousand things happened last week. I guess we have to prepare ourselves for the next level.

Let me ask you a question: Do you have more good memories or do you have more bad memories when you look back on your life? (Good.) I guess it's up to you right? 

(A small boy sitting next to his mother on the front row says "bad memories" and the room is filled with laughter.)

You're just a kid, man, I don't think you've lived yet. Okay, at least you've got an opinion and you're honest.

I guess that memories are the building blocks of the thing that we call intelligence. If you look at the animal kingdom, memory is a survival mechanism. It's very, very important. Animals have a greater acute sense than we do because they have to survive based on that. Memory is very important. Right from birth they have to learn how to survive, to catch prey and find food sources, and to navigate from point A to point B. All that depends on memory, and their life depends on it.

For us, too, memory is very important because that's pretty much how we build our lives. If you don't have many good memories, I guess that you have to build them, to find them somehow.

So, are there some things that we can rely on to help us achieve that end? Yes, according to the promise from heaven we have the greatest capacity in terms of storing memory, a capacity beyond just the building blocks of intelligence. There are all sorts of diverse applications of the intellectual capacities that we have to do the things that we want to do beyond what you see in the animal kingdom. So, how would you create a good memory if you don't have many? That's why imagination is very important and creativity is very important. Because everything that you want to do after you have reached a certain stage where you have a basic building block of creating your greater self, because you have learned, you have memorized how to speak. You know how to read, how to write, how to do basic things. What you need to do is ... you have to plan.

You have to plan your future. You have to envision yourself 10 years from now. Let's say you're a 12-year-old kid or barely a teenager, middle school, whatever. You have to envision yourself 10 years from now, 20 years from now.

It hasn't happened yet. You don't have it in your memory, but you can store those mental images that you're creating about yourself. It might not be true at the moment in physical form because it hasn't been manifested yet, however, that image that you see of yourself perhaps one day, if you do the right thing, if you are persistent and you do what it takes to get there and keep at it, perhaps the image of you that you have stored in your head when you're a sixth-grader, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, will come true.

All the stuff we store, I guess we store it mostly for some reason, but some things, we don't even think about it, we just store it. And sometimes it just comes up. Sometimes it can be helpful, but if you are not careful it can also harm you. Because most likely if you store certain things that you are not fully in control of you are going to create something not nice.

Now let's say that you have to love somebody. You have to love your parents. You can't hate your parents. You have to love your siblings. You can't hate your siblings. You're going to be with them forever. There are many things that make a relationship work and sometimes you have to work at it. And it's not one way—it's always both ways. And there are things that can sometimes get in the way of building a greater relationship. How do you go about achieving a greater relationship when certain images or certain memories always get in the way?

There are so many people who I do not know personally out there walking around on this planet. If I make judgment based on one casual image that I perceive in a moment then that would not be good.

So, it is with my siblings. The only memory I have of intimacy with them is Heung Jin. We shared the same room until I reached my teenage years. Other than that there is too much age gap, so I don't know these kids except when they were very young. That's the only memories that I have of them. 

What I see now, in my mind I'm concerned to put it nicely. Still, I have to make that choice of holding on to that. And I do have that capacity to make greater memories, even if it is not happening now, even if it is not real now. It can happen tomorrow. And I guess that's where religion comes in. It talks about faith and it tries to teach you the importance of faith.

How can you achieve faith when obviously you can't project yourself into the future? You try to make yourself happy. I'm happy now, but if you go out and look at the world, it makes you angry. You get depressed. No matter how you try to make yourself happy you just want to hold on to your happiness. You pretty much have to do that and start blocking out all other things.

I like to see greatness in people that I care about. What you see outside should be the same as what is inside. Sometimes because you care about somebody, you do care, it should matter to you.

Sometimes, yes, you do get emotional about it. Why? Because it's not right, it's not going anywhere like that. It's not like we're fighting a war with bullets and guns. It's competition. Success depends on the quality of how you achieve it. It's not that simple. Murder and mayhem might be simpler than loving competition.

I still remember all sorts of stuff that Father used to talk about, the kind of images of fantasy that he drew in my head with his words. I still hold on to those images because I don't think they're bad. I'm not going to say because I'm getting too old for this, and I'm more practical than that. It isn't going to happen in my lifetime. I should hold on to it. Why? Because it looks nice—let me just start with that. If that can happen, the world will really look nice.

How do you get there? We have a lot of really good people doing a lot of good things all the time. It's kind of unfortunate that the number kind of stays at a certain level. It really doesn't fluctuate too much. A lot of people come for all sorts of different reasons and I guess it's important that we start to branch out on that level because it's very difficult to find quality help, right?

Those people do make that kind of association, they make that connection because they think we're successful, we're somebody. We're great in this and that, however we commercialize ourselves. I don't know how true that is in essence, but maybe it is through all the propaganda that we make.

It is serious stuff, just making propaganda, especially in a free society, because the absolute ruler in a free society is the masses. The presidents and all the politicians are just managers. The masses can get rid of them if they don't like them. Most people like to stay away from politics because they're busy taking care of their own business.

How can we trust all the people that we connect with, especially the politicians? Even if there is a genuine person who wants to get into politics, to make laws that help society and benefit people, their power is limited. In the end you have to get permission from the masses. So, pretty much people do whatever freedom allows, and the easiest way to live free is to think about yourself, focus on yourself. "I don't want to get involved in all this stuff other than what I have to deal with in my own life. How can I change this world?"

And when you want to change, you have to try. You can't just think about it. That's a loser's way. What's the opposite? I guess that's the winner's way. You have to do what you think is right. If you're going to change the world, you have to start changing the world trying to build that relationship that is important. Ultimately you have to bridge the gap between humanity and God and True Parents.

It has to start, genuinely from the persons that think that is the way. If everybody thinks that is the way, that's what everybody has to do, no exceptions. It's difficult. It is difficult. It is difficult to try to get more­ more—more. Sometimes you don't know what more is.

I don't get anything out of this. I don't get anything out of this other than making memories, right? Some of the faces I don't think I can ever erase because I see you every week. (Laughter.) I don't think I can erase it out of my memory. (Laughter.) I don't know whether that's good or bad. (A lot of laughter.)

It's those things that I think that matter in changing the world. You have to think that that kind of stuff is important. Just like everybody else, not what's just important to you. There are more people like you than there are the privileged people in the world. You have to have the right attitude.

 Last week I had stayed up all night talking to someone and I was a little out of whack. I wanted to call Janine and ask her to have someone else pitch in for me, but since I was awake, I came.

Anyway, what you see is what you get. I'm trying. All those fantasies that I have, all those dreams that I have, I want to hold on to them. I think it's good. I think I'm going to keep them in my memory as long as I'm here. Sometimes you need to dream. And everything that you see is good sometimes. But if we're going to win, everybody has to be real.

I have one more week. Next week I'll be here but after that I'll be gone for about two months. 

Take care of yourself.

I'll be here next week. Okay.