Training the Mind

1. Our mind accompanies us for eternity, while our body accompanies us for a lifespan. Our mind regulates our life, while our body regulates our everyday routine. Life differs from a daily routine. A life refers to an entire lifetime, while daily routine refers to each day in a life.

Similarly, our mind and body are inherently different. With human beings, the mind controls life while the body controls daily routines. Thus, if we do not have meals in our daily routine, our body will die.

Furthermore, our mind also eats, but it refuses to do so in situations that go against the conscience. When we examine this, we can see that the mind's outlook is far broader than the body's. (35-091, 1970.10.04)

The mind is the parent among parents

2. If our mind is unable to harmonize with others, we need to train our mind and move it to accommodate everyone completely. Unless we do so, in the Last Days, Satan will put us on trial and accuse us by pointing out our failings, saying, “Listen, you failed to fulfill that condition, didn't you?” (2-139, 1957.03.17)

3. The original mind is the parent among parents because it represents the God of the universe. It is also the teacher among teachers and the owner among owners. Hence, a mind that preserves its purity is the closest parent, closer than any mother in the world.

A pure mind is also closer than any outstanding teacher in the world. Furthermore, the mind is better able to guide its servants in the right direction than any owner in the world. (200-297, 1990.02.26)

4. The mind and body differ. From where did you receive your original mind? You received it from God. Your mind comes from God. Your mind comes from Heaven, while your body comes from your parents. Since the body comes from the earth, it consumes what is of the earth; hence, you are indebted to the earth.

This earth is made of matter. People are either male or female; we are extensions of Adam and Eve, who were created by God. When we speak of a person, we are implicitly inferring substance. What can we find within a person?

We can find the earth, the person, and God. We have had the phrase “heaven, hearth, and humankind” for eons. Heaven is the mind, the earth is the body, and humankind is the people. (26-184, 1969.10.25)

5. God, the earth, and humankind are within me. The mind is in the subject position and the body is in the object position. Since the mind is the center of the body, we have a will, a worldview, and an advocacy.

The person in whom these three are united is called a person of integrity. A person of integrity is a conscientious person whose body moves according to the dictates of his or her mind. She can control her body with her mind.

This is why the mind is the center. The mind represents God and the body represents humanity. God has dominion over the mind, the mind has dominion over the body, and the body has dominion over creation. (26-184, 1969.10.25)

6. Human beings have a mind and body. The body is constituted of elements received from one's parents and the earth. However, there is an issue with the mind. God wishes to establish the mind and body on an unchanging foundation of heart.

This is the purpose for which God created human beings and the purpose of His providence to redeem fallen human beings. However healthy and comfortable the mind may be, the reality is that the mind and the body are unable to enter the home of the heart and rest there. (8-045, 1959.11.01)

7. What is it that people have toiled until now to find? People have labored to find the divine heart that can come into the place of the human heart. We have been striving to unite our hearts with this divine heart.

Once our heart unites with this absolute heart, all attempts to remove this heart will fail. What we have been searching for until now is the heart that no ideology, thought or false owner can invade. If we cannot find this heart, we will not be able to avoid sorrow and sadness. (3-079, 1957.09.29)

The mind's inclination

8. The mind conforms to nature's logic. It seeks to advance eternally toward goodness, very much like the needle of a compass pointing north. The logic of nature does not go astray; it does not evade goodness.

This never happens. Similarly, a person's mind seeks to advance toward a specific goal. The mind moves toward life; it moves through the heart, and it discerns the truth.

The mind seeks to harmonize with the whole as it strives to blend with the idea of the whole. It also forms the basis upon which Heaven can instruct one about alternative paths. (7-182, 1959.09.06)

9. We each have a mind. Our mind pushes us in a particular direction, irrespective of time and space, searching for a greater idea. However, although we have been aware of its tendency throughout history, we have been unable to explain its movement to ourselves.

Everyone wants to be recognized and trusted. It is also true that we live with the idea that whatever we think and advocate comes from our mind's movement. Now, when you demand recognition and trust, are you doing so from a position related to the divine purpose? You are not.

From this perspective, what is your value? You cannot achieve the ultimate purpose unless, as a subject partner that can move all the creation, you put your mind's aspirations into practice every day and go through a process of honest self-evaluation. God seeks to realize His divine purpose.

If we cannot fulfill His Will, we cannot stand tall in front of Him, and we will be unable to raise our heads before God. (7-206, 1959.09.13)

10. Heaven is the subject partner of our life, our philosophy, our love, our mind, and our body. From the moment I connect with Heaven, my body is no longer mine, my mind is no longer mine, my heart is no longer mine and my ideas are no longer mine.

Only then can I stand as the temple of God and the lord of creation. Then, since my mind has become God's mind, it can represent God's mind. Finally, my life has the authority to move the entire universe.

My heart appears as a representative of God's heart and my philosophy is the Father's philosophy. Only then does the purpose in which we place our hope reach its conclusion. (8-203, 1959.12.20)

11. Your original mind urges you to avoid the world's reality, which is stimulating yet painful, and seek the ideal. Every leader needs to confront reality. However, no one knows about this mind that seeks, yearns for, and urges us toward the ideal. We have to follow the dictates of this mind.

Countless saints in history have followed this mind. In the future, everyone will be like that. We have to affirm this original mind; talking about anything else is useless.

If we realize that we are people who should not oppose the mind that seeks the ideal, but should follow it, then even though we do not live in an ideal world, we will be able to connect with the ideal world for which we yearn and of which we dream. Today's world is not ideal, due to the Fall. (7-263, 1959.09.27)

12. All the pain and suffering God has borne on our behalf is reflected in our minds and bodies. The mind works tirelessly to guide every action of the body toward the goal of goodness while checking the environment.

When the body loses the objective and direction the mind prescribes and falls into the pit of death, the mind looks to what is good and recommends it to the body. Therefore, everything begins with me.

As our mind represents Heaven, the objective sought by our mind and the objective sought by Heaven has to be in accord. (10-227, 1960.10.16)

13. If God is the center of your mind, the objective of God and the objective of your mind must be the same. Furthermore, your mind should be united with the direction on which God is focused. Have mind and body unity, your body should accord with the ideal standard of the earth. In the historical Last Days, the ideal world of goodness will come.

Your body and your daily life should connect with the world that agrees with the ideology of goodness. When the standard of your mind and the standard of God separate, you face difficulties.

When the standard of your physical life conflicts with the concept of the whole earth, difficulties arise. In that case, where should you begin to mend your ways? The answer lies with you, not with others. (10-227, 1960.10.16)

The path of devotion, faith, and prayer

14. You have resolved even to face death in walking this new path of faith. Therefore, if you advance in the direction of God's wishes with absolute faith, your path of faith will lead you to discover divine value.

Hence, you need to feel the responsibility that accompanies such faith and become true sons and daughters who practice this faith. Unless you do so, there is no way you can stand before the Father. You will not be able to stand before the absolute Father as a true son or daughter, and a patriot. (3-022, 1957.09.08)

15. If you look from a historical perspective at how God has searched for people, you will see that He has found people through their conditions of faith. On the one hand, God has asked people to establish conditions of faith, but on the other hand, He has demanded that people put their faith into action.

After you create a bond of heart with God, to gain a foothold to erase feelings of sadness, you need to forge the path of putting faith into practice. Only in this way can you establish history-shaping connections. (6-211, 1959.05.17)

16. To resolve any awkward situation, you have to report about yourself honestly and truthfully. Sincerely report, “I am this kind of person” and request, “I am a wayward person, but You are good; if only You would sympathize with a person like me and kindly show me the path of rectitude I need to follow, I would be grateful.”

If you engage people with a prayerful heart, your environment will become natural. However, if you persist in your ways, whatever effort you make will not settle your mind. Rather than settling in that environment, you will leave.

Therefore, to be able to say, “I am such and such a person and I wish to build a relationship with you,” you need to report about yourself sincerely and truthfully. This takes place through prayer. Prayers help rectify your course when you are going astray.

If you reflect on your daily life, you will see that your words and actions vacillate and your feelings go up and down. Every moment, as you live and breathe, you are weighing this and that. In weighing your options, you have to be sincere.
(045-247, 1971.07.04)

17. Normal people do not understand my prayers. They need to read them a hundred times to grasp them. When you hear the mysterious sounds of heaven, to resonate with them, you need profound reverence and feeling. Therefore, you need to connect with nature, with everything.

Unless you have that connection, you will not know. The Buddha said the same: “In heaven and earth, I alone am the honored one.” He could say that from his being in that state. It is like this when you overcome boundaries.
(566-268, 2007.06.22)

18. You need devotional conditions and prayer. Is your position that of a resurrected person? If you are not standing in that position, are you at least ardently seeking it? Are you confident about taking responsibility for the environment in your path of faith? We have not yet accomplished this.

This is why prayer is necessary. Prayer has the power to move the goalposts of life and death. It is difficult to offer the ardent prayer that is necessary.

How busy would you be if you had to build a great tower stretching miles upward?

Seriously, if you had to build an expansive and tall tower, wouldn't you be incredibly busy? If you resolved to build it and projected that it would take fifty years, you would not have a second to lose. (31-317, 1970.06.07)

19. I believe that prayer is the greatest power because it makes possible what is impossible. In the Unification Church emphasizes prayer, but we do not teach a different method of prayer.

It is just the contents of our prayers that are different. My teaching has been, “Do not pray for yourself” I teach that you should pray instead for your mission, for others, and to offer words of comfort to God. (091-117, 1977.02.03)

20. When you face a difficult problem, resolve it with prayer. Why then do we pray? Prayer enables a relationship based on God's standard of heart.

When you pray about an issue with a serious heart of concern for God and the nation, God will certainly teach you what was before and what is to come. Such occurrences will take place quite frequently. (33-131, 1970.08.11)

21. More than expanding outward, we need to unite our minds and find the path that leads deep within. This is the life of prayer today's Christianity talks about.

Prayers that seek to connect with God's mind and profoundly experience the essence of God's Word are more precious than prayers about setting certain objectives and achieving them. This is why we seek a quiet place when we want to pray. (29-318, 1970.03.13)

22. If you lead a life of prayer, you will feel indescribable joy. This state of joy is the state of God's thought before creation. Having reached this state, if you can stand in the position where you can describe such joy, you will be in the state of God after He created the entire universe.

This level is the position of God as He created the universe through the Word. From that state, you have to proclaim the Word. If you do so, people certainly will appear wanting to receive the Word. (29-321, 1970.03.13)

23. If you like to pray, you have to do so before beginning your daily activities. Hence, the most important time is daybreak. Dawn is the most important time.

This is the period that determines the outcome of your day. Pray at this time. To offer a profound prayer filled with emotions hitherto unknown and unfelt, do not center your prayers on yourself. Pray for a great objective on the level of the nation or the world. (30-123, 1970.03.21)

24. You have to lead a profound life of prayer, which means you steep your daily life in the providence. You also have to reflect constantly upon how closely you are tying your daily life to the course the church is going and the path God is walking.

To do so, your heart has to yearn for church news to the extent that you just go to church or call the church at any time. God surely will dwell in the family in which He finds such a heart.

Without such a heart, no root can sustain what is planted; it is the same as having planted nothing. To understand this principle, you need to reorganize your life to lay such a foundation. (31-293, 1970.06.04)

25. Prayer is more important than eating. This is why I like nature and why I treasure times of solitude. I like the tranquility of the night. You will not have the foundation to experience the richness of life unless you go the way of prayer.

In that world, in that space, you can feel and experience a love that is very difficult to find elsewhere. Based on prayer, you can strengthen yourself and advance your life of faith. I cannot always pull you along. What will you do when I am no longer around?

You need to make prayer an intrinsic part of your inner life. You need to pray day and night, so yours will be living prayers. Only in this way will your desires and the subject of your prayers grow and develop as the years pass.

This is why you have to be aware of the time in which you are living. Develop your inner life through prayer. (104-112, 1979.04.15)

26. Prayer is not something undertaken with a capricious mind. To pray, you have to find a deep place, a place that can represent Heaven, a place that is the center, not the sidelines. How then should you pray?

To pray about serious and desperate problems in your life, cleanse yourself and pray in a location that is not on the borderline, and that forever has no relationship with Satan.

Those who say, “No matter how fervently I pray, God never answers” are praying in a position where no answers are possible. How can God respond to a prayer you utter while on Satan's side? (123-080, 1982.12.12)

27. The mind is round. There are doors to the mind. However, when you pray, your prayers do not always flow smoothly. As the four seasons are different, prayers are different according to your character.

There are times when your mind unites with the direction of Heaven; you must not miss these moments. If you lead a life of prayer, you will immediately sense the coming of these moments; you will already know.

Hence, you must prepare thoroughly for such occasions. Then, when such a time arrives, having already made various preparations, you need to open your mind's doors as wide as possible, let the extraordinary force and love of God flow into you, and reach the stage where you can perceive this force and this love.
(156-213, 1966.05.25)

28. In the Last Days, we need to offer many tearful prayers. When we pray, we need to shed not only tears but also blood. We went over the hill of tears and the hill of the cross.

In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus offered a prayer drenched in blood. He shed tears as he held and embraced the Jewish nation. It is prayers such as these that vanquish Satan's power. (10-042, 1960.06.26)

29. Pray from the bottom of your heart. When your words and actions reflect your innermost heart, they will become honorable words and actions that bring you no shame before God, Satan, or anyone else. God is seeking such people.
(2-050, 1957.02.17)

30. If you pray from the bottom of your heart, with religious discipline, crying out to Heaven, your prayer will be answered. However, if you offer the same feeble prayers over the decades, as many people do today, your prayers will remain unanswered.

You must pray based on your ability to pledge with a genuine heart of love. You need an earnest heart capable of waiting thirty or forty years after offering a prayer.

If you pray with an earnest heart that will remember that prayer after thirty or forty years, your prayer will be fulfilled. There is no need to pray for it over and over again. (7-095, 1959.07.19)

31. When you pray, you should pray with tears and break out in sweat. You should pray with this conviction: “If something strikes me, even if it penetrates my body, it won't knock me down.”

Even as people persecute and oppose you, you should know that the time when God will answer your prayers is drawing near. As you follow the path of the Unification Church, your hardships will increase when you come close to that time. You need to understand this. (112-055, 1981.03.29)

32. You need to experience a life filled with new sensations that arise from complete devotion to God. When you engage in activities with your heart filled with these sensations, you will witness multiplication and, eventually, development.

When a tree is sprouting new buds, each day is different. Each day is filled with life's energy. Every time you lose this feeling, you need to pray at the risk of your life. Pray through the night and accumulate merit to progress.

When you lead such a life, occasionally God will make it difficult for you to find the time to offer conditions. In such circumstances, however hard you try to find hope, you will not succeed.

Furthermore, there will be times when the harder you try, the deeper you will sink into a dark pit. If you find yourself in such circumstances, you need to subjugate Satan who follows you, renew your heart of attendance to God, and fight with greater vigor. (30-133, 1970.03.21)

33. The more we reflect on the course we need to complete, the more we realize that completion is not possible by personal effort alone. This is why people of faith have to pray.

As an individual, if you are unable to inherit the tradition that is united completely with God's Will, any effort you make, however great, could produce an outcome that directly contradicts God's Will, irrespective of the loyalty you demonstrate. We have to understand the reality of our present position. (071-276, 1974.05.05)

34. Before praying for your sons and daughters, you should pray for the ancestors in heaven who have invested themselves until now. Your heart has to desire the welfare of humankind ahead of your welfare.

Before you dance, look at all the people groaning in the pit of sorrow, and worry about them. Even when he was happy, Jesus could not show his happiness in his countenance or actions. Please relate in your heart to Jesus' circumstances.
(4-125, 1958.03.23)

35. If you pray according to your will, it will not work. God will have nothing to do with your prayers, even if you conduct numerous vigils. We have to deny one sphere, embrace the next sphere, and advance for its sake.

For example, to hold on to the nation, which is greater, we have to deny the family. Public service means living for what is greater. This is the only way we can leave a legacy.

Worrying about one's desires or seeking to advance one's family comes later. We have to go forward centered on the greater objective. (28-270, 1970.02.08)

36. Fallen human beings are born amid apparent happiness but pass away amid tears. Nonetheless, the nation will bless those who grasp and shed tears for the nation; pitiful religious groups will bless those who grasp them and weep for them, and the world will bless those who hold on to them and shed tears for the world. (4-166, 1958.04.06)

The path of separation to become an offering

37. You have to be able to pledge that you will make of yourself a conditional offering before Heaven. Jesus sacrificed himself as an offering for the sake of the world, heaven and earth, and humanity.

For this, he went the way of the cross. Through the cross, Jesus instantly surpassed the standard of sacrifice and devotion that the countless patriots and saints who came before him established.

Therefore, to achieve a life of universal value, you need to be determined to pledge that you will make of yourself an offering to be presented at a certain time to Heaven, to the world, and to the individual. (2-016, 1957.01.06)

38. From the perspective of the Unification Church, God's Will, my will and you will have to be one. This is the priority. Then we need to determine a direction and make a conditional offering. Unless we meet these conditions, the fulfillment of the Will is impossible, even if the time is ripe.

The three generations – yours, your parents', and your grandparents' – have to unite in the position of a single offering. When you look at everything in the universe, you see that there is no way apart from for these three to become one. (28-082, 1970.01.04)

39. The making of a conditional offering determines the ownership of that which is offered. Because I know all about this, I came up with this definition. How can we determine whether something or someone belongs to the side of good or the side of evil?

God and Satan negotiate over the heart of love. No one has known this. Heaven can take possession of an object that belongs to Satan's world only if we develop the way of love, set up the will to pioneer the way of love, stand in the position to find a person of love, and return to Heaven an elevated standard of love.

God and human beings can unite through that object only if Heaven has taken possession of it. This is why God can claim ownership over human beings through our sacrificial offerings. (166-070, 1987.05.28)

40. God feels the pain of humanity as His own and rejoices in the happiness of each human being as His own. Therefore, one who takes the position of a sacrificial offering in front of God should maintain a heart that brings joy to both God and humanity.

Then, so that God and humanity can stand in the plus position, that is, the position to benefit, we who are attuned to that purpose need to stand willingly in the minus position, becoming the sacrifice. As the sacrifice, the conditional offering, we are the support group that can resurrect everything that was lost through the Fall. (224-012, 1991.11.21)

41. The Fall was a departure from the essential, altruistic love, which began with an independent awakening of a mixed-up, self-centered love.

Since the Fall began with self-centeredness, the world that recognizes self-centeredness has continued to expand as a base for Satan's invasion.

If you are willing to sacrifice personal love for the sake of God's love and altruistic love, and if you strive to separate from Satan by stamping out selfish love, you will eradicate the base through which Satan has infiltrated. (146-012, 1986.06.01)