Experiences and Challenges on the Path of Faith

1. Do you have mystical experiences in your life of faith, or spiritually experience God's presence? Some among you frequently see me spiritually during prayers or in dreams and receive directions from me.

This should happen one hundred percent of the time. This is the strength, the pride, and the treasure we have. Up to this point, no religion has gone through such an intense kind of experiential process. This is why religions are confused and have become secularized.

However, the Unification Church knows that God stands at the very end. Even if the storms and floods of life rage against us, and we are about to die, the wonderful fact is that we have become men and women who can leave behind a legacy of hope for tomorrow. (087-191, 1976.06.02)

Experiencing God's Word

2. One does not grow tired of hearing words of truth. You need to experience this. If you go to a church that offers words of truth, such that after hearing the same content a hundred times you still wish you could hear more, you surely have encountered heaven.

And when you meet a certain church leader a hundred or a thousand times yet still wish to meet him or her again, do not leave this leader. If one of your arms is amputated, grab this church leader with your other. If you meet such a leader, you certainly have encountered heaven. (010-142, 1960.09.18)

3. If you resolve to attend the Unification Church after hearing the Divine Principle, you will certainly face tests. Or, if you promise to go to a Divine Principle workshop, an accident might happen at home or incidents might occur several times to obstruct you.

You must have had such experiences. This formula is certain. This happens because, when you wish to ascend from the individual level to a higher one, Satan steps on you from above. (024-268, 1969.08.24)

4. To share the Word with a profound standard of heart, unlike any other, you need to deeply know the Word. To connect with a one hundred percent standard of heart, you need to personally experience and realize the Word deeply like that, then share it. Through our actions, too, we must behave in such a way that we can be liked and respected. (157-047, 1967.02.01)

5. A life of faith is a real battle. We must be victorious in this battle. When a new member seeks to come to church, for instance, Satan is always busy working to impede him or her.

Hence, to overcome this impediment, the spiritual parent must be absolute. This kind of perfect plus creates a perfect minus. Therefore, we must not vacillate. We must pursue our life of faith determinedly, without wavering. (198-009, 1990.01.20)

Spiritual experiences and experiences of the heart

6. Through the works of the Holy Spirit, the early Christian church could act in ways to overcome the vortex of persecution. However, these works did not expand to the world, beginning with the individual and progressing through the levels of family and tribe; they remained local.

This was the case because the early church members did not establish a direction that such works could have supported. They didn't realize the fundamental purpose that underlay their spiritual experiences, what processes should have followed these works, or what final destination they should have headed toward. (61-017, 1972.08.20)

7. From the beginning, I have worked out solutions to important problems based on reference to the spirit world.

I have been testing to see whether the spirit world indeed provides suitable solutions, due to its standard that goes beyond the nation and the world. In the spirit world, people transcend nationalities and meet according to their spiritual level.
(405-135, 2003.02.11)

8. Henceforth, you need to have spiritual experiences. You need to know whether your endeavors will succeed or fail. If you pray fervently, you'll know in advance that you'll succeed.

Praying enlivens your mood and makes your body feel more nimble. You can sense it in your body; your body knows. To reach this state, you need to completely cleanse yourself of all notions of self-centeredness and selfishness.
(104-116, 1979.04.15)

9. Through the spirit world, every day I guide and instruct the missionaries who are toiling all over the world. You have to realize this in your daily life. If you come in and commit to the Unification Church after listening to the Word for a week, your attitude about life changes.

You come to detest your past habits. Then my teachings flow into your heart very well. You come to know what I'm going to say in advance, and cannot but become a core member of the Unification Church. (543-146, 2006.10.29)

10. A life of faith requires deep empathy. Without this profound dimension, you can't know genuine faith. Hence, you must experience empathy deeply. What does this mean?

When Heaven is sorrowful, each of us needs to feel that sorrow. Deep empathy means this feeling of sorrow floods into you. If you can empathize deeply, you do not need to pray. (255-036, 1994.03.05)

11. Profound empathy is most important in our life of faith. Such empathy leads you to weep unfathomable streams of tears. Have you ever felt tears flowing from your eyes while in a state of transcendental consciousness?

This is nothing like the anger and sadness you feel after someone insults you. Your heart is seized with a feeling of grief and tears pour ceaselessly from your eyes. A believer's daily life should essentially be like this. Beyond understanding, deep pain seizes your heart. You feel so heavy-hearted you don't know what to do.
(10-202, 1960.10.02)

12. As you practice deep empathic faith throughout your life, you should walk a principled course to reach the standard of an unchanging victor who can represent eternity to all creation.

Unless you establish this standard, sorrowful conditions will remain unresolved on Earth. If we leave behind such unresolved sorrowful conditions, it will be difficult for us to find God's internal heart when we go to heaven.

That is why, as living beings connected to Jesus in spirit and the Holy Spirit in body, we must grow to be substantial manifestations of God's glory. Thereafter, we will become substantial embodiments of faith. (1-132, 1956.06.27)

13. To this day, I have offered more devoted effort in front of God than the myriads of Christians in Korea. A person of heart makes progress. Through empathy, such a person expands the realm of heart from the individual to the family, nation, and world.

When someone offers acts of devotion with heart, God will hold on to this person. If God were to hold on to people who are not like that, He would not be able to carry out His operations.

The greatest issue is how someone who has received the command to defend Heaven will advance with faith. One small error can impede the outcome of history and lead to historical judgment later on.

This is why all our daily activities – even sleeping, eating, and putting on clothes – must be done based on a life of faith. (025-318, 1969.10.12)

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 profound experiences throughout 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. The energy producing such opportunities can even transform into forces that oppose and impede you. (33-262, 1970.08.16)

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. (076-124, 1975.02.02)

16. You have to grievously empathize with God, who has been working according to heavenly principles and demonstrating endless loyalty toward humankind 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. (458-070, 2004.07.07)

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 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.
(2-106, 1957.03.06)

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. (2-143, 1957.03.17)

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. (32-099, 1970.06.28)

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. (34-224, 1970.09.13)