Sun Jin Moon
January 13, 2018
Excerpt
YAYAM Leadership Retreat Winter 2018
International Peace Education Center (IPEC) in Las Vegas, Nevada
Question: What helps you to have clarity and strength to do what you do?
That's simple; we just did it today. We did Hoon Dok Hae. This is the route to Heavenly Parent and True Parents. I am no greater than anybody else in this room. Everything good in my life has been gotten from Hoon Dok Hae, prayer and meditation. Anybody can do this. Don't miss the chance to bring this into your life every day as a daily practice, just as you brush your teeth and comb your hair -- Hoon Dok Hae, meditation and yoga are what I do. I think I sent the yoga principles to you guys. Did you have a chance to look them over? It is interesting, right? Good. I can get into that, because when I was growing up in the movement, we didn't have the completion stage yet. It was still the indemnity phase. Mother was still indemnifying Eve. Everything wasn't completed and liberated. A lot of what we were taught was what not to do. The culture we grew up in was scary -- fighting all the time. Satan's attacking you! You always had to be on the defensive. You were constantly in a state of fight or flight. It was like cortisol [a hormone similar to adrenaline]. Crazy! It is not good for you.
True Mother said True Parents have completed everything. The indemnity phase is completed. We are now in completion and liberated from indemnity. This is the stage where we should be creating a culture of heart. What is that? One where we live with joy and love, and peace is our mission.
Transformation at a price
I went into my first yoga training when True Father passed away. I was asking Father after he had passed away to guide me. Guide me! I have to help Mother and I have no clue what to do. I am so unworthy. I need guidance. Then, I prayed and of course cried all night and the next morning I got an email about a yoga teaching opportunity exactly at a time I had free before Mother was going to come to Hawaii after Father passed away. I thought, Maybe this is a sign. When you pray or have a dream or something, God is talking to you; when you have these moments, take them.
I took it. I enrolled myself in two weeks of yoga, two hundred hours of yoga in two weeks; that's over ten hours a day. From the break of dawn, about 5:00, until 10 pm we were doing yoga, meditation, teaching, postures and other things for two weeks straight. I completely turned vegetarian because they wanted you to detox and spiritually center yourself and be committed to the course. It was a shock to the body. We grew up in a meat eating, McDonald's family. [She laughs] Imagine not eating meat and detoxifying. It was an amazing experience. Those crazy things that are hard to do transform your life. When you can get out of a way that wasn't working for you, to find a way that is working for you, do it. Do it. Embrace it. Share it with other people; share ways that you find helpful. This is one of the principles. The first thing you learn in yoga -- before you do all of the funny poses that you all know from watching TV or reading fitness magazines -- is that the most important thing is centering the mind and the intention. These ten principles are the yamas and niyamas [in Sanskrit, the liturgical language of Hinduism]. They help you focus on individual perfection -- how you can unify mind and body to be at peace and centered with God at all times. That is the first step. When I started learning these, I realized that they connect in many ways with True Parents' teachings. This was an "Aha" moment.
Graciousness
The first one is "ahimsa." Does anybody know what that means? "Non-harming." What can we relate that to in Divine Principle? [The third blessing] Yes. Non-harming means loving everything, because it means not to harm anything or energy -- whatever. You need to have absolute unconditional love for all things in creation and for yourself. Not to harm anything is like loving everything -- loving everything with that kind of energy and heart. That's the first principle. Ahimsa is non-violence and non-harming. Because what is the opposite of love? Hate; when you hate, you harm. The opposite is non-harming, loving everything.
Honesty and fairness
The next one is "satya," "truthfulness." This is important. I think everybody has to be true to her heart. Like Father says, only you can polish your heart, but you need to think about it with the first principle: How can you be true to yourselves without harming anyone else? This means, [as came up in one of your questions] how can I be a true, principled person to someone who is homosexual? Be truthful in your belief and your cause, but in being truthful, do not harm. Do it in a loving way. These are simple ways to guide you to balance your mind, your thinking, to always stay on the path of love and not omitting, being truthful, keeping that consciousness balanced in love. You might want to be truthful to your parent that has hurt you or someone in the movement that has hurt you or some leader but in a way that you do not do it as an act of hate or aggression but as some way to love or heal. These are ways, tools with which to think, to help you navigate whatever comes your way.
The third one is "asteya," which means "non-stealing." This doesn't just mean monetary stealing. Of course, Father says stealing public money is the worst thing you can do, but you could steal someone's heart. You could steal someone's time, energy, space -- all these things. So how can I be conscious of others at all times and not take more than what is given to me or what I have earned? That's a good thing to do; it's a fair practice.
Self-control
The next one is brahmacharya. In the yoga tradition, the only people who did yoga were male Buddhist monks. Women weren't allowed to do yoga because they weren't clean, but now that era is transcended! [She laughs] …because Mother is opening the door to a balanced world. "Brahmacharya" is in the same line as when Father says "absolute sex." Why, for all those in the first generation, was everything -- Don't drink, don't smoke, don't do this or that? We have to be absolutely clean, pure and free from all sensory things that bother our ability to connect with a higher consciousness.
Anything that takes your energy away from God's conscious energy is a disturbance. You want to moderate that. Have you ever listened to loud, angry music? What kind of head-space does that put you in? Everything affects you. Can anyone think of another sensory [input]? Smart phones! Our attachment to interconnected devices… You could be on one all day and not be focusing on your children, your pets, your school, your congregation. Does anybody play video games here? How much time does that take from you? It's a full-body experience. Nothing can remove you from the game. Video games aren't bad. iPhones aren't bad. Devices aren't bad. Chocolate cake isn't bad in itself. A loving relationship with your blessed partner is not evil or bad. It's how you use it, how that energy is balanced to do good.
Has anybody ever been on a diet? If I tell you, Don't eat chocolate cake. Don't eat sugar. Don't drink coffee: What are you going to do? Exactly! You're going to crave those things. Instead of that say, Have a good relationship with all foods. If you eat food with fear, it doesn't help digestion. You are not getting the nutrients, physiologically. You are harming yourself.
Live within limits
All these things are interconnected. Don't harm yourself. Have balance. Be truthful and stay in the nongrasping, non-stealing area. The fifth one also goes into that. "Aparigraha" means "non-grasping." To
want things in life is natural. Everybody wants something. Has anyone ever gone shopping, wanted something badly, bought it and about two weeks later, you don't even notice it's there? You bought an iPhone you really wanted and then a new one comes out and you cannot even like your own phone any more, you just want the new one. It is dissatisfaction 24/7. How can you practice non-grasping? If you're not attached to it like that, it can't traumatize you. [Laughs] It's true. How do I let stuff go? Do I really need this stuff in my life? Would I rather spend that money saving dogs in Korea from dog meat farms and donate it to the ASPCA [American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals]? Think about it. You could be doing a lot of good. It's a mind-shift. When you start becoming conscious of these practices, you will notice your mind starting to change and wanting to do better things. In yoga, we call it good karma, doing positive good acts.
Pure water
The next is "purity;" it's called "saucha." This is like we have in the Principle. We want to purify. When Mother says all those in the second generation are pure water; many acts of indemnity and restoration had to go into our being able to be here today. In that same way, we want to purify and maintain and thank and appreciate that previous generation that helped get us to this point. From this point, we want to broaden and build more joy, more purity a better world a more peaceful world.
The next one is "santosha," which means "contentment" -- finding joy in just being. Has anybody ever felt like that? You're just complete in your being. You're grateful in your being. You're just OK. When I get to that place is usually when I welcome God into my heart and everything is complete.
This one goes with the next one, "tapas," "the right effort." It means doing the work. Doing the good karma in your life, because none of these things is automatic, as Father said. Everything has to be done by doing good. So when we're to plant one tree, we are going to invest extra effort to plant two or three trees. We want to have this heart. "Svadhyaya" is "self-study," so you are not going to learn anything or you are not going to have transformation and change unless you do the work, you put in the practice. This is where you do it -- in the Hoon Dok Hae, in the workshops in your daily life, in your daily practices.
The last one is "ishvara pranidhana." That is the big one. It is the tenth principle but it's actually the biggest principle -- "surrendering to God." That might be a hard, when you think about it, surrendering your entire being to God. The reason that is the tenth principle is because when you practice all the nine others you are slowly starting to understand walking in the ways of God. You realize that through all these conscious steps of how to live your life -- with love, with goodness, with right effort and right speech for everybody -- you are walking in the way of God, creating peace, creating love and creating joy. When you realize that you have the ability to do this and act on it and create it every day, this last principle becomes true. Because you are Heavenly Parent. You are the divine representation of Heavenly Parent on earth. You choose to express him or her, Heavenly Parent, in your life. That is the important principle. Many people think that God is separate, somewhere beyond, like there, True Parents in a picture. It's in you. When you surrender to the God in you, Heavenly Parent in you, the divine light in you, you realize you have all the power, like a super hero. [She laughs] It's true; you can do anything. You can overcome anything. You can love anyone. I hope that that was helpful. These are practical ways to figure out how to love people. We hear all the time that we should love people but no one gives us practical A-B-C, ten steps, how to do it.